Several communities were flattened, more than 160 people died and hundreds were missing after Hurricane Helen tore through various parts of the southeastern United States.

Experts say there were several factors that made the “monster” storm so devastating and so fast.

The storm’s destructive potential has prompted climate scientists and meteorologists to prepare before it even forms. Barry Kim, a health climatologist at Louisiana State University, said forecasters expect something to form days before it does.

“For Helen, everything was pointing to a big storm forming out there and getting into the Gulf of Mexico and turning into the monster it did,” Kim said.

One reason for this, he said, is sea surface temperatures in that region, where near-record temperatures will only be surpassed by 2023, creating a “fertile ground” for a powerful storm.

Temperatures in that area were well above 30 degrees Celsius, something contributed to by climate change, said Anthony Varnell, chief meteorologist at Global News.

“This is the fuel for these storms and this is one of the reasons they intensified so quickly,” he said.

After forming, the storm made its way north and experienced rapid intensification — when a storm’s maximum sustained winds increased by at least 30 mph over a 24-hour period — to the point that it grew from a Category 1 to a Category 4 storm in less than a day.

Sea temperatures helped fuel this, but making landfall in Florida with such force was also due to the lower amount of wind shear seen.

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Once a hurricane forms and intensifies quickly, it must remain in an environment conducive to sustaining it, with wind shear potentially taking away some of its winds and strength, Kim said. With Helen, that didn’t happen.

“This storm, Helen, just kept building all the way up until it hit the coast,” Kim said. “It never really saw any decline, it just kept building and building and building all the way until land made it.” [Category] 4 strength.”

Florida’s Big Bend area experienced a massive storm surge, with six to 15 feet of water on islands and coastal neighborhoods along the state’s west coast.

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Although the storm hit Florida’s Big Bend coast last Thursday with winds reaching 140 mph, the storm was felt by many because of its size – about 350 miles, or 560 kilometers, across.

As the storm moved inland, Varnell said the storm was met with moisture from a weather system that brought more than a month of rain to the southeastern United States before Helen moved in.

“So it was extracting that moisture from the Atlantic Ocean, from the Gulf of Mexico, right over North Carolina, right over Tennessee,” he said.

He added that when a storm hits mountains, such as Appalachia, parts of which are in North Carolina, moisture rises upward, and as it rises, more moisture is removed.

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It brought heavy rains, with more than 40 trillion gallons inundating the area from both the hurricane and rainstorm and causing flood damage that some meteorologists told The Associated Press was “horrific.”

“All of this has to go somewhere so that the water goes down over a 48-hour period, but the disaster keeps unfolding as you start losing highways and cities, and the water eventually goes back into the ocean,” Varnell said.

Scientists say climate change is helping some large hurricanes become wetter — and more intense as a result.

In addition, a warmer atmosphere can hold more water, creating more intense rainstorms, though the topography of the Appalachian Mountains complicates the interaction between weather events and climate change, Jim Smith, a hydrologist at Princeton University, told The Associated Press. Press.

When it came to Helen, Kim said what he noticed about this storm was that it hit the “big three” of hurricanes — winds, storm surge and rain — creating a storm that will still be felt for months to come.

While some like Hurricane Harvey could see a massive amount of rain, or Hurricane Katrina, which was known for its powerful storms, Helen caused a coastal impact with its surge, high winds inland and now heavy rains in the Carolinas.

“This storm had all three components and it did pretty good damage,” he said.

— With files from The Associated Press

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