I only live close and my eyes watered up

May 20, 2025, 6:51 AM

Only live 1 1/2 hours from Maggie Valley and spend a week each year riding the area with about 100 friends. Some Canadian friends heard us talking last year about how we turn that trip into a meandering 7 hour ride through WNC-ETn mountains. Got a call last week saying 4 of them want too trailer to our place and take that ride with us. Much of the area that we ride was hard hit by Helene, so I told my Son that we need to make a scouting trip so as not to disappoint our friends by running into road closures. One word.....devastation. We spent all day in and around our usual rides, some of the areas look like a bomb went off.
Stopped many years at a motorcycle repair shop in Green Mountain.

New bridge near Green Mountain, Toe River bank always thick with trees.

Things I had never seen, cleaning out the Toe.

Delivering shoring pilings when there is no road.

These shots are some 9 months after the storm. Prayers for those resilient folks.

flag link

military_tech

thumb_down

thumb_up

monter le cheval de fer
A coot will usually blink when hit in the head with a ball-peen hammer

I agree to some extent. But this was at least a 500 year storm event. No one alive today had ever seen anything like it in that area. The risk of something like that happening in that area again is very slim. I have made comments very similar to yours regarding coastal building like the Charleston area but this is just a different event because it is so rare for that area. A lot of the buildings destroyed by the flooding in WNC had been there for a very long time. You are correct about flood prone river bottoms and steep slopes but this storm affected areas that had previously been safe from the worst storms for many, many years. And yes, some areas won’t ever be the same, at least not in our lifetimes.

I only live close and my eyes watered up

Re: I only live close and my eyes watered up

Sad. Its unlikely that it will ever be the same.

Re: Sad. Its unlikely that it will ever be the same.

In the hollers of WNC you will find nothing

Re: Sad. Its unlikely that it will ever be the same.

Some Appalachian history suggests more like 100 year event

Re: I only live close and my eyes watered up

Re: I only live close and my eyes watered up

Re: I only live close and my eyes watered up

TigerBoard POTD