Tennessee State Climatologist Dr. Andrew Joyner of Eastern Tennessee State University said the events will grow more frequent and more intense in the coming years. Joyner, who is helping state and local governments throughout Appalachia plan emergency mitigation strategies, said states and communities in the region need to be prepared to handle extreme weather over the next 10 to 15 years.

“The big picture is we are getting warmer and wetter,” Joyner said in an interview with the Daily Yonder. “We’ve observed that, not even projecting into the future, we see these types of hurricanes increasing in intensity, just like Helene kind of did, and so it points to the increasing chances that we would have more of these events in the future.”

In 2024, Hurricane Helene hit western Tennessee and

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