Helene’s Floods: Climate Change’s New Normal

By Willy Blackmore | Word In Black(WIB) – When Helene reached northern Georgia as a tropical storm at the end of last week, its wind speeds had dropped to the point that it was no longer a hurricane. Huge and comparatively slower-moving too, the storm took two days to pass through the Atlanta metro area, and while it hung over the city it dropped an extraordinary amount of rain: nearly a foot at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International airport, where the previous two-day record rainfall of 9 inches was set in 1886.Some areas saw even more rain, like McDonough, Georgia, which recorded nearly 14 inches.& According to the latest numbers, nearly 200 people have been killed by the hurricane, including 25 in Georgia, and hundreds of people are still missing.RELATED:& The Urgency of Climate Action NowThe storm went from a tropical depression to being forecast as a major hurricane in what was likely record time.“They had never forecast a major hurricane within 60 hours for a disturbance below tropical storm level,” said Sam Lillo, a meteorologist and software engineer for DTN Weather, based on a computer analysis of the center’s historical forecast data. “The entire forecast is also basically faster than has...