The latest on Hurricanes Milton and Helene

The storm damage in western North Carolina after Hurricane Helene swept through on September 27 was immense. More than 1,000 bridges, some 5,000 miles of state-owned roads, 160 water and sewage systems, and an estimated 126,000 homes were damaged or destroyed. At least 100 people were killed, and about 20 more were still missing as of mid-October. North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper estimated it would cost a record-breaking $53 billion to repair damage and cover all recovery needs.

It’s little surprise that in the weeks after the storm, grassroots response efforts inundated the region. Driving south from Bakersville into Asheville, nearly every church, grocery store, gas station, firehouse, and strip mall parking lot had been converted to some sort of supply distribution point or relief hub. Schools, agricultural centers, and abandoned gyms served as American Red Cross shelters housing nearly 1,000 people who lost their homes. Hand-painted signs pointing the way to a hot meal or free supplies dotted the roads. Droves of volunteers descended on downed trees with chainsaws, hacking a path through to isolated mountain communities and houses. With so many roadways damaged or simply washed away, nurses, paramedics, and other volunteers with medical training mounted ATVs to conduct welfare checks. Others loaded up mules and walked supplies into the mountains.

On the afternoon of October 10, author and influencer Caroline Calloway texted me “I lived bitch.” She posted a screenshot of the same proof-of-life selfie and message on her Instagram story that morning after Hurricane Milton made landfall.

We’d spoken one day earlier about Calloway’s decision not to evacuate for the monster of a storm, as well as to post about that choice on social media, and at one point I asked if she thought she was going to die.

Even when a life-threatening hurricane is headed your way, there are many reasons why you might stay put. You might have dependent family members who can’t leave due to disabilities or other health-related reasons; you might not have reliable transportation to get to a safer area, and what’s more, no gas to get there. Sometimes, you simply refuse to leave your home and everything you own behind.

There’s also the reality of just not being able to afford it.

Hurricanes Milton and Helene have absolutely devastated large swaths of the United States. But residents who are cleaning out waterlogged homes and businesses have another challenge to their recovery, one that hasn’t let up — viral disinformation.

There’s the rumor that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is limiting payouts to disaster survivors to $750. False, according to a fact-checking page the agency has set up.

Ahead of Hurricane Milton’s destructive landfall on Wednesday evening, millions of residents chose to leave. For roughly 1,200 inmates in the Manatee County Jail, which is located in a major evacuation zone near Sarasota, Florida, that wasn’t an option. Local authorities decided not to evacuate the prisoners so they rode out the storm — which brought widespread flooding, property damage, and fierce winds to the area — in the jail.

They weren’t alone. The Manatee County Jail is one of many that chose not to evacuate, according to the New York Times. Pinellas County and Lee County, two others on the Gulf Coast that were in the storm’s direct trajectory, also did not evacuate their jails, per a Pinellas County news conference and a spokesperson for Lee County Sheriff’s Office. (Manatee County and Pinellas County Sheriff’s Offices did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

After churning across the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico earlier this week, Milton made landfall near Sarasota, Florida, around 8:30 pm Wednesday as a powerful Category 3 hurricane with up to 120 mile-per-hour winds. The storm — and the many tornadoes it spawned — tore the roofs off of homes and a major baseball stadium and left more than 3 million people without power across the peninsula. Several fatalities have been reported so far.

Sarasota is slightly south of Tampa, which was spared from the eye of the hurricane and extreme storm surge. Remarkably, winds from Milton actually caused a so-called reverse storm surge in Tampa Bay, which is when seawater recedes. But Tampa, the region’s largest city, still saw severe flooding: Milton dumped an astonishing 17 inches of rain in the region on Wednesday, causing what some have described as a 1,000-year flooding event.

The term “climate haven” never made much sense. After Hurricane Helene dumped two feet of rain on western North Carolina, many major media outlets marveled at how Asheville, which had been celebrated as a climate haven, had been devastated by a climate-related disaster.

Some in the media later reported accurately that climate havens don’t actually exist. But that still raises the question: Where did this climate haven concept even come from?

Just weeks ago, Hurricane Helene devastated multiple states in the southeastern US. Over 230 people were killed because of the storm, and that number is likely to go up as the search for missing people continues. Entire homes, streets, and towns across the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida have been torn apart. Plans for rebuilding are bound to be a slow struggle.

Now, Florida is primed to face disaster once again — before it’s even had a fair chance at recovering from the last one.

Millions of Americans are still struggling to find their bearings after Hurricane Helene made landfall last week, killing at least 230 people across six states, washing away homes, and leaving thousands without clean water or electricity for days across the southeastern United States.

For the survivors, the aftermath has been agonizing, and if past hurricanes are any indication, it will take years to fully recover. Many of the residents in afflicted communities have never witnessed a disaster like this before and are now navigating layers of government bureaucracy to get supplies, relief money, and to begin rebuilding. It’s creating frustration and confusion, leaving the door open to misinformation and scams around the relief effort.

Since Hurricane Helene decimated parts of western North Carolina last week, former President Donald Trump has seized on the tragedy to perpetuate lies about the federal response, sowing chaos and confusion as officials scramble to help those affected.

In recent days, Trump has repeatedly and falsely suggested that the federal government is purposely neglecting areas with Republican voters, that it is funneling emergency aid to migrants instead of disaster response, and that it’s giving hurricane victims just $750 in support.

Between Sunday and Monday morning — a mere 24 hours — Hurricane Milton grew from a tropical storm to a fierce Category 5 hurricane. With wind speeds pushing 180 miles per hour Monday afternoon, before weakening slightly Tuesday, Milton is one of the strongest hurricanes ever recorded in the Atlantic.

Forecasters expect Milton, which is once again a Category 5 storm as it churns in the Gulf of Mexico, to make landfall in western Florida on Wednesday night. The storm may lose steam before then as it faces disruptive winds and dry air, yet Milton is still expected to be an “extremely dangerous” hurricane upon arrival, according to the National Hurricane Center. Storm surge in the densely populated Tampa Bay, which could see a direct hit, could reach 15 feet, the Center said in an advisory Monday.

In the wake of Hurricane Helene, a devastating Category 4 storm that has ravaged the Southeast, leaders rushed to restore homes, infrastructure, and power for millions of people. And now, another life-threatening storm, Hurricane Milton, a Category 5, approaches the Florida coast. Amid the overwhelming destruction and the mounting chaos expected from these back-to-back storms, and a death toll of at least 227 people across six states, one group risks being overlooked in the scramble: the homeless population, those already vulnerable before the storm.

Disaster relief for people who were homeless prior to a hurricane has always been lacking, as FEMA, the main federal agency tasked with providing aid, has a policy that explicitly excludes those unhoused people from most forms of help, including housing and direct assistance. In recent years, the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has stepped up to try to plug some of those gaps in social safety, but a new bill moving through Congress threatens these efforts.

You’ve probably seen a satellite phone in a movie. Usually they’re depicted as black bricks that let you phone home from Mount Everest for $100 a minute. Whether you’re a mountaineer or not, the technology has gotten smaller, better, and much cheaper. In fact, you may have a satphone in your pocket right now and not even know it.

An untold number of people in western North Carolina have made this realization in the wake of Hurricane Helene, which left towns and counties without power, water, and cell service. The latest generations of smartphones, however, can connect directly to satellites. That means you can send text messages and make emergency phone calls, even when there’s not a working cell tower for miles.

You wouldn’t expect to find the linchpin of the global microchip industry tucked away in a Blue Ridge Mountains town, but it’s there. Scattered across the outskirts of Spruce Pine, a series of mines has been extracting some of the purest quartz on Earth for decades. The resource is so essential that almost every advanced microchip produced today touches it during the manufacturing process.

Those mines are now closed indefinitely, after Hurricane Helene dumped 2 feet of water on Spruce Pine, devastating the area. And with this singular supply of ultra-pure quartz cut off for the foreseeable future, the world’s supply of chips hangs in the balance.

Over the weekend, Hurricane Helene pummeled the Southeast, causing sweeping devastation to areas of the country unaccustomed to such disasters. The storm destroyed homes, businesses, and roadways, left millions without power and cell service, and stranded people in western North Carolina in the midst of several feet of floodwater. More than 130 deaths have been reported across six states, including Florida, Tennessee, Georgia, and North Carolina.

Supplies are being airlifted into impacted areas of North Carolina and the National Guard has been deployed to assist in rescue efforts. As relief continues, many across the country are looking to offer their support.

Hurricane Helene, the Category 4 storm that slammed the American Southeast over the weekend, has killed more than 110 people — and likely millions of chickens.

Almost half of the more than 9 billion chickens farmed for meat in the US, known as “broiler” chickens, are raised and slaughtered in the region. Georgia is the nation’s top chicken producer, processing 1.3 billion chickens annually. Over the weekend, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp told reporters that 107 poultry facilities in the state had been “damaged or totally destroyed by the storm.”

The scenes from North Carolina are shocking: roads and bridges washed away. Houses ripped from their foundations. Entire towns reduced to mud and debris.

On Thursday night, Hurricane Helene slammed Florida as a Category 4 storm with winds reaching 140 miles per hour. Along the coast, Helene knocked down trees and power lines, and caused record storm surge.

Birds are incredible navigators, capable of traveling thousands of miles each year to the same location. But sometimes even they end up in the wrong place at the wrong time — like inside a hurricane.

Last night, as Hurricane Helene was making landfall in Florida as a powerful Category 4 storm, radar spotted a mass in the eye of the storm that experts say is likely birds and perhaps also insects.

Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida last night as a ferocious Category 4 storm after gaining strength as it barreled across the Gulf of Mexico. According to Vox’s Benji Jones, the storm and its expected surge have the potential to wreak havoc across the Southeast, but also dump heavy rains onto Appalachia and beyond.

Before summer had even begun, experts were predicting that this year’s hurricane season would be an unusually active one, with as many as 25 named storms churning across the Atlantic Ocean. The ingredients were all there: the uniquely warm ocean temperatures, lessened Atlantic trade winds and wind shear, and the La Niña conditions cooling the waters of the Pacific.

Hurricane Helene has quickly intensified into a massive Category 4 storm, with hurricane-force winds extending up to 60 miles outward from the eye. Forecasters warn that Helene — which has wind speeds of near 120 miles per hour — could be deadly for those living in coastal Florida, where it’s expected to make landfall this evening.

The National Hurricane Center predicts storm surge as high as 20 feet in some parts of Florida’s Big Bend, a region between the panhandle and the peninsula. Storm surge, which describes a rise in sea level, is the most dangerous part of tropical storms and has a deadly track record: In 2022, storm surge killed more than 40 people during Hurricane Ian. The storm is also expected to inundate inland regions across much of the southeastern US with rain, dumping a foot or more in parts of southern Appalachia.