👋 Hi, everyone! This week, I’m writing to you from New York City, where Climate Week is well underway. I was in town for Climate Week events last year, too. And I remember the festivities being clouded by a devastating piece of news: Hurricane Helene, a deadly Category 4 storm, made landfall on September 26 — exactly one year ago today — and tore through the Southeastern United States.

A year out from the catastrophic Hurricane, Grist is taking a look at some of the lessons learned. And on a sunnier note, I’ve also got news for y’all this week about both flaws and future potential with solar energy.

Lessons learned a year after Hurricane Helene

Owners, volunteers, and community members help clean up mud and debris at a coffee shop in Marshall, North Carolina after Hurricane Helene in 2024.

Owners, volunteers, and community members help clean up mud and debris at a coffee shop in Marshall, North Carolina, after Hurricane Helene in 2024.

When Hurricane Helene arrived last year, it was called a 5,000-year flood — an event with a likelihood of occurring roughly once every 5,000 years. While every community hopes an extreme disaster like this will never arrive on their doorstep, we know that climate change is making storms more intense and more common. Helene itself intensified over record heat in the Gulf of Mexico that was made 200 to 500 times more likely because of global heating. In other words, as much as we can say that the changing climate is to blame for any one weather event, it was largely to blame for this one. 

Part of what made Helene feel like a wakeup call, apart from the scale of the devastation, was where it hit. Western North Carolina, and in particular the city of Asheville, was previously thought of as something of a climate haven. Asheville, known as a quaint, artsy town and a destination for hikers and craft beer lovers, sits inland from the coast and typically enjoys temperate weather.

For the communities that experienced the shock of being pummeled by this storm and devastated by its floods, it’s changed the way they think about climate change, disasters, and their own need to prepare. “Some are rethinking their own lives and choices, and some are even rethinking their futures — whether they should move away, beef up their own emergency preparedness, dig in and get to know their neighbors, or some combination of the three,” my colleagues Ayurella Horn-Muller, Emily Jones, and Katie Myers wrote in a story published this morning. They talked to a handful of survivors about the lessons they’ve learned about what it really takes to prepare.

Jennifer Rambo, principal of the Montessori School in Spruce Pine, North Carolina, received donated water pumps and porta-potties as the school waited for running water to return after the storm. She pulled them out of storage when a water main burst this spring. “I was wondering, Are these kids going to be traumatized when they see these hand sinks?” she recounted to Katie. But the ability to go back into “storm mode” proved to be a good thing — the kids even found the fun in using familiar emergency supplies. Rambo has also been working on updating the school’s emergency plans and inclement weather closure policies, and looking into getting a generator. 

In the nearby town of Bakersville, North Carolina, County Manager Allen Cook has been focused on clearing debris, coordinating supplies for rural residents, and building trust in the local government — including fighting the spread of disinformation and conspiracy theories that brewed online in the aftermath of the storm. Cook himself described feeling mistrustful of the government and wanting to take the time to earn that trust from his rattled community through face-to-face conversations. While he said he is uncertain about the science of climate change, the storm motivated him to bolster emergency plans, including launching an emergency alert app for the county. “We’re fragile right now,” he said. “So, we want to be ready.”

As Helene’s anniversary arrives, I’ve been at Climate Week in New York, where Katie and I had the opportunity to sit down with the mayor of Asheville, Esther Manheimer, to ask how she’s been thinking about readiness and recovery. Manheimer, who’s been the city’s mayor since 2013, said that navigating an extreme weather disaster was not a responsibility that was on her radar when she decided to become a public official. It wasn’t covered at “new mayor school,” either (which is a real thing, by the way). “Honestly, until you go through it, you don’t really have an appreciation for all the pieces of it,” she said. 

A year out from the crisis, Manheimer noted, some parts of rebuilding and adapting are just getting started. “All the immediate needs like power, water, communications, those kinds of things were long ago restored. But now we’re into this long-term public infrastructure improvement project cycle,” she said. The city has about $1 billion pledged in recovery funds — around four times Asheville’s annual budget — and managing that will be one of its next challenges.

The city plans to focus some of that money on shoring up spaces that became de facto resilience hubs during the storm, she said — for instance, adding backup generators, solar panels, and water distribution to community centers or other gathering spaces that residents flocked to. The city also plans to work on readiness plans with community partners, like hospitals, nursing homes, and schools. 

But Manheimer said one of the biggest lessons has been just how difficult it is for towns and cities to do the work needed to be prepared for disasters. “Unless you’re a large city that can kind of break off and be independent with your finances, I do not understand how public infrastructure — water, sewer, roads — can be managed on a local government budget to withstand massive weather events,” she said. 

“We have a lot of cities and counties with infrastructure that was all built in the ’60s or the ’50s or ’40s. And now the cost to bring it forward and modernize it is so expensive — and necessary, if you’re going to harden yourself against future weather events. I think individuals are thinking about, ‘Do I need satellite communication? Do I need a well in my yard? Do I need a whole-house generator?’ These are all good things. But how does a city do the equivalent of that for their home, so to speak? That is daunting to me. We’ve gotta ask ourselves some tough questions.” 

Read more:

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🌎And one more thing

If you’re in New York City this weekend, catch Grist at The Marketplace of the Future, a world’s fair-style expo showcasing innovative solutions to climate change. Come find the Grist table to participate in a fun activity writing the headlines you hope to see in your vision of a clean, green, just future. (We’ll be featuring some of these in a future newsletter!) You can register for the event here — and use the code WITHGRIST for a special discount.

In other news

And finally, looking forward to …

… a solar-powered future. While the industry is far from perfect, I must admit, I’ve never gotten over the cool factor of getting energy from the sun. (Maybe I just secretly want to be a plant?) And the ongoing innovation in solar tech — like a recent development that could convert windows into solar panels while keeping them transparent — is exciting to me. Here’s a little glimpse of a future where solar energy is more embedded into our everyday lives. 

☀️☀️☀️

You yawn as you unlock the door to your little cafe to begin setting up. It’s supposed to be another gorgeous sunny day. When the weather’s like this, you don’t even need to plug the machines in. The light streaming in through the windows is enough to power everything. 

Maybe today you’ll set up the panini press and espresso machine on the patio again. The outdoor setup was a hit yesterday — your kids even made a game of running in to scoop cups of ice for every cold drink, the ice chest the only thing too heavy to lug outside …

— a drabble by Claire Elise Thompson

☀️☀️☀️

A drabble is a 100-word piece of fiction — in this case, offering a tiny glimpse of what a clean, green, just future might look like. Want to try writing your own (and see it featured in a future newsletter)? We would love to hear from you! Please send us your visions for our climate future, in drabble form, at lookingforward@grist.org

👋 See you next week!