It was a year ago Friday that Cory Lillberg recalls awakening to a forecast of wind and rain from a weakening Hurricane Helene.

The co-owner and winemaker at Parker-Binns Vineyard in Mill Spring, North Carolina, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, headed a couple of miles down the road and into town and watched the conditions begin to change.

“As I was driving back, there were literally pine trees falling into our main road, Highway 108, on either side of me, behind me,” he said during a phone conversation last week. “I’m watching it happen in my rearview mirror, and there’s other trees along the side of the road going down. I got home in the nick of time. I remember watching, first, the trees at my house, which is about a mile away from the vineyard. At the time, I lost five

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