Carl Schreck spent his career studying tropical storms thousands of miles away from home. But when Hurricane Helene hit the American climate scientist's hometown in North Carolina and flooded several of his friends' homes, the shocking experience made him rethink his research priorities. "I know how devastating the rainfall in hurricanes can be, but like to actually know people.
.. that are affected by it -- it is, it's really heartbreaking to see," Schreck told AFP from his home near Ashville, the epicenter of the disaster that ravaged the southeastern United States.
As another major hurricane, Milton, was barrelling toward Florida, a study released Wednesday by the respected World Weather Attribution concluded that Helene's destructive force was exacerbated by climate change. Schreck, a scholar at the Institute for Climate Studies at North Carolina State University, and his colleagues had been studying Helene's formation in the Caribbean for days -- until it pummeled Asheville on September 26-27. Several of Schreck's friends saw their houses destroyed, while a family he knew died in the flooding.
"It's been over 100 years since we've seen something like this," said Schreck, whose own house was spared. "So it's been a very tragic experience for our community." With at least 230 people killed, Helene is the second deadliest hurricane to hit the continental United States in more than half a century after Katrina, which ravaged the state of Louisiana in 2005, claiming nearly 1,4.