The National Weather Service expects Helene’s arrival in western North Carolina to be one of the region’s most significant modern weather events.

The guide was a dire warning to North Carolinians in the mountains, with flood totals expected to be comparable to the 1916 flood in the Asheville area. Weather officials with the NWS’s Greenville-Spartanburg office expect the impact to be greater than that of Tropical Storm Fred, which caused at least five deaths in Haywood County in 2021.

“This is one of the worst storms in modern history to hit western North Carolina,” said Gov. Roy Cooper. “Turn around, don’t drown. We lost too many North Carolinians to the floods.”

The National Weather Service declared a flash flood emergency for much of the region Friday morning. Flash flood disasters are extremely rare, according to WRAL meteorologist Chris Michaels.

“It’s pretty rare. In 2023, less than 1 percent of all flash flood warnings in the country were flash flood emergencies,” Michaels said. “That’s because we saw almost a foot of rain in Asheville.”

Authorities with the North Carolina Department of Transportation have closed I-40 on the North Carolina-Tennessee route. According to NCDOT, there were “multiple road outages within a four-mile stretch” on the highway along the Tennessee border.

“We have detours in place and we do not yet have a timeline for repairs,” an NCDOT official said.

Earlier in the day, NCDOT asked residents to consider all roads in the area closed due to flooding. Linda Pryor, a farmer, said she had never seen such flooding in her life.

“I remember my parents talking about a flood in 1916 and it was a very similar scenario where it was two systems in a row,” she said. “This is the first time I’ve experienced this firsthand.”

Two people died in Helene, North Carolina, on Friday afternoon.

One person died when a tree fell on a home in northwest Charlotte early Friday morning. Another person was taken to hospital with life-threatening injuries. WCNC reports that this is the first known death related to Helene in the Charlotte area.

In Catawba County, a 4-year-old girl died and three other children were taken to the hospital after two vehicles collided in heavy rain.

Helene ensured that several events at Appalachian State University’s Parents’ Weekend ended as students prepared for the storm. The school’s football game on Saturday was also canceled.

North Carolina’s mountain towns experienced widespread outages

Cooper said that while he was able to contact some city officials, cell service was still down in several areas in the western part of the state and widespread outages had made it difficult for people to tell their loved ones they were OK go.

“For a lot of people, there’s no way to communicate,” Cooper told WRAL News.

Some areas in the mountains experienced wind gusts of 70 and 80 miles per hour. Cooper said the winds were so strong that AT&T and Verizon officials had difficulty restoring cell service and power to the area.

“There are some issues that people are having because the wind is just too strong for them to get to their equipment,” Cooper said. “I told them what we are hearing from the people of Western North Carolina and they are working to restore service to people as quickly and safely as possible.”

According to Duke Energy, more than 900,000 customers were without power in the western region of the state. Duke Energy said it is closely monitoring Helene’s expected path as the hurricane moves toward North Carolina.

Duke Energy said it plans to use self-healing technology to restore power.

“It automatically detects power outages and then redirects power to other lines to restore service to customers more quickly,” Duke Energy representative Jeff Brooks said. “It’s like a GPS for the power grid. It is looking for alternative ways to reroute the power.”

“This doesn’t take the tree off the line or repair the broken pole; We continue to need our supply teams for this. But it can reduce the number of customers affected by the outage by up to 75%.”

You can report power outages on the Duke Energy website or mobile app; You can also text 57801 or call 1-800-769-3766.

To see in real time which areas are experiencing outages, go to outagemap.duke-energy.com.

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Several residents were already affected by the rain before Helene arrived

Conditions began to deteriorate Thursday afternoon. Several areas were affected by flooding before Helene moved through the mountains.

It has been raining in western North Carolina since Wednesday afternoon, with some areas reporting tornadoes. Rachel Aranson, an Asheville resident, said the rain made it difficult to tell the difference between the river and the road.

“It’s crazy,” she said. “The river just completely merges into the sidewalk and into the street. I can’t imagine how deep it is. I’ve never seen him so deep before.”

Torin Kexel, the owner of the Flying Bike tour company, has already removed everything from his store as Asheville prepares for a flood the city hasn’t seen since the early 20th century.

“From what I’ve heard, the flooding is rising to 1916 levels, which is above our basement windows,” he said. “Our space could be flooded.”

Businesses in the area have already closed shop as city residents were ordered to shelter in place Thursday evening.

“We had to make thousands of dollars in refunds this weekend and we have to move all of these things,” Kexel said. “So it’s about renting trucks, bringing people here and all that. If this place floods, we could be without a home for the foreseeable future.”

Christina Sanchez visited Asheville for the first time this week, a trip that has now been cut short.

“The street is flooded. The dock has risen into the air (and) there are rails under the water,” she said. “It’s crazy.”

“This will be a crisis”

Canton Mayor Zeb Smathers said he was particularly worried about flash flooding and mudslides, adding that it brought back memories of Tropical Storm Fred.

“I’m going to lose a lot of sleep the next few nights,” he said. “We have been preparing for this storm since Sunday,” Smathers said. “Right now it’s about making sure lives are safe… because we know this storm is coming.”

Smathers added he was concerned that neighboring cities and towns were unprepared for Helene.

“We are concerned that this storm is so powerful (and) so dangerous for the entire region, particularly west of Canton, that our sister cities may not be prepared,” he said.

Smathers and other officials in mountain towns urged residents to prepare for the worst.

“This will be a crisis for the entire region,” he said. “If you find yourself near a body of water or streambed anywhere in Western North Carolina, please take precautions, follow the advice of emergency services, use common sense and check on your neighbors.”