More often than not we get a fair few days warning about tropical storms and hurricanes as they form off the west coast of Africa and move eastwards across the Atlantic. Not so with Helene. This hurricane took shape in the Caribbean and was battering Florida in very short order.
The devastation there and in states to the north, most especially North Carolina, has been frightening. The final death toll looks like it will be in the hundreds. The task of recovery and rebuilding is going to be massive.
We will witness overlapping recovery efforts because some parts of Florida have yet to recover from Hurricane Ian a couple of years ago.
In some places there will be no rebuilding at all post Helene. Clearly, federal, state and local authorities are going to be stretched to the max as communities scramble to put the pieces of shattered lives, livelihoods, and infrastructure back together.
The sheer size and force of this storm was astonishing. The deluge that affected western North Carolina in particular was, as the word goes, Biblical.
If climate change is an agent in all of this we need to get used to the Biblical. Even separately from Helene we have lately heard the term "once in a thousand years" more than once and in reference to rainfall events.
More houses on the North Carolina Outer Banks have been claimed by the ocean. This phenomenon has been evident for years, but lately has been rising higher, like the sea level.
We need to accept the science and then go about taking measures to better deal with climate change and, perhaps, even someday possibly roll it back.
Some people don't believe the science. Some call climate change a hoax. It either exists or it doesn't exist. There is no hoax afoot.
In the end, belief has the potential to spur action. Disbelief spurs nothing. And nature, quite simply, doesn't care.
We have had numerous wake up calls over the last few decades. Hurricane Helene is but the latest. Despite this too many of us, sadly, are still asleep at the wheel.
