Snow fell across parts of North Carolina still without power from Hurricane Helene on Tuesday.
Hurricane Helene made landfall on September 26 as a Category 4 hurricane, with maximum sustained winds of around 140 miles per hour near Perry, Florida, in the state’s Big Bend region. It then cut inland, bringing torrential rains and catastrophic flooding to North Carolina. More than 200 people were killed by the storm, according to the Associated Press, and now cold weather is creating a challenge for people in the area who are still without power or adequate shelter.
Weeks after the storm’s devasting path, nearly 12,000 people remain without power. The cold front—which plunged temperatures to sub-freezing and produced snow in some areas—prompted donation requests for cold weather supplies for the people still struggling to recover from the storm.
A stock photo of a cold winter day at the snow-covered Appalachian Trail at Roan Mountain on the North Carolina-Tennessee border. Snow fell in some high elevation mountain areas in North Carolina.
Eifel Kreutz/Getty
Snow following after a hurricane is unusual, AccuWeather reported, although some hurricanes have produced snow in parts of the Appalachian Mountains in the past.
AccuWeather lead hurricane forecaster Alex DaSilva said that the snowfall measured between a dusting and 1.5 inches, and it was mostly on higher elevation areas in western North Carolina above 3,000 feet. He said the snow, although not unheard of, is a little bit early for this time of year.
The cold, however, is more of an issue.
“The areas in the western portion of the Carolinas are seeing temperatures around freezing for overnight lows, so that’s certainly a concern and they’ll see that again tonight,” Dasilva told Newsweek. “Unfortunately, a lot of the areas that were hit by the worst of the weather of Helene will get into the 30s tonight again.”
The cold weather could interrupt ongoing clean-up operations, and DaSilva advised people to dress warmly.
Frost advisories and freeze warnings are in place for the region, according to the National Weather Service (NWS). Temperatures were expected to dip as low as 29 degrees Fahrenheit overnight on Wednesday for parts of western North Carolina and northeast Georgia.
“A Freeze Warning will be in effect for the NC Mountains and northern foothills, with sub-freezing temperatures as low as 28 is possible,” the NWS office in Greenville-Spartanburg posted on X, formerly Twitter. “A Frost Advisory is in effect for the rest of the area with temperatures of 33-37 degrees will be cold enough to support frost formation.”
A map included with the forecast showed that Asheville, one of the areas hardest hit by Helene, was within the freeze warning area. In an earlier post, the NWS office said that normal temperatures would return to the region by Saturday.
