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Hurricanes are dangerous far from the coast. Communities are struggling to prepare
Extreme rain is becoming an increasing danger as the climate gets hotter, even from storms that aren’t hurricanes.
Melissa Sue Gerrits/Getty Images North America
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Melissa Sue Gerrits/Getty Images North America
Hurricane Helene’s destructive path tore across several states, causing the ocean surge on the Florida coast and cutting off power supplies in Georgia. But the heaviest rainfall, and some of the worst damage, was hundreds of miles from where the storm made landfall.
In the area around Asheville, North Carolina, rain swelled streams and tributaries in the almost 1,000 square mile watershed above the city. More than 15 inches of rain fell in the area, running off mountainous terrain that was already saturated from recent storms. The swollen French Broad River crumbled interstate highways, flooded homes with mud, and cut off the drinking water supply. The flooding has killed dozens of people so far.
The catastrophic damage is a sign of what climate scientists have been warning about: as the Earth heats up, rainfall is becoming increasingly extreme and deadly. And torrential rain can occur anywhere, including far from coastlines.
The heaviest storms in the Southeastern U.S. today are already dropping 37 percent more rain since 1958, according to a recent study. As the climate keeps changing, that could increase by 20 percent or more.
“We’ve had these shocking amounts of rain,” says Bill Hunt, a professor at NC State University who works on stormwater infrastructure. “It’s hard to imagine where you’re safe.”
The infrastructure in most cities, including roads, bridges and buildings, isn’t set up to handle increasingly intense storms. That’s because engineers design it using old rainfall records, sometimes decades old. That means even recently built infrastructure is only adequate for last century’s storms.
“The situation is just getting worse,” says Chad Berginnis, executive director of Association of State Floodplain Managers. “Every decade, the average annual flood losses in the U.S. is roughly doubling. It’s unsustainable.”
Still, cities could soon have new tools to make themselves safer. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is currently updating the rainfall records for the whole country, including projecting how much worse storms could be. North Carolina, like some other states, is also working on in-depth flood planning to help communities prepare for the risks ahead.
Hurricane Helene is not a one-off
As Hurricane Helene approached the U.S. coast, forecasters sent out alerts that it had reached a Category 4 storm. That’s the rating system for a hurricane’s severity, which is based entirely on wind speed.
But that masks the hidden danger hurricanes bring: rainfall. In 2018, Hurricane Florence hit North Carolina as only a Category 1, but the slow-moving storm dropped up to 30 inches of rain, causing severe flooding. Just in mid-September this year, a storm dropped 20 inches of rain on Wilmington, North Carolina, causing flooding there.
In Asheville, the steep mountain terrain funneled the runoff into the river valley, where much of the city is built. Most cities are also largely paved over, preventing the rainfall from soaking into the ground. As a result, flooding can happen far from any water body.
“It’s not isolated to Hurricane Helene and it’s not isolated to North Carolina,” Hunt says. “It’s no longer that if you’re on the river, it’s a problem. You may be miles away and have a problem.
Most of the country is already experiencing heavier rainstorms, a trend that’s only expected to continue. As humans add more heat-trapping emissions to the atmosphere, temperatures are getting hotter. Warmer air is able to hold more water vapor, meaning that storms have more potential rainfall to release.
New tools for future storms
While it may sound wonky, human lives can depend on dusty volumes of weather data.
All of the infrastructure in a city is designed to handle water. Bridges and highways are constructed to withstand large floods. Roadways and sidewalks funnel water into storm drains, which prevent rainfall from pooling in the streets and flooding buildings.
When all of that is built, engineers need to know how much rainfall the infrastructure should be able to handle. For that, they turn to historical rainfall records that are maintained by NOAA, known as Atlas 14.
But those rainfall records are only sporadically updated, which means they don’t reflect the increasing severity of storms. Some cities use records that are more than 60 years old. That means billions of dollars of infrastructure spending is going toward projects that may not be able to handle climate change.
“We’re flying blind right now,” Berginnis says. “We don’t know what the appropriate standard is because we have outdated data that we’re making those assumptions on.”
After a new federal law was passed in 2022, NOAA began updating rainfall records nationwide. Atlas 15, as it’s known, will also take climate change into account, helping city engineers design instructure that will be adequate in the decades ahead. The records are expected to be released in 2026 for the lower 48 states, with the rest of the country in 2027.
“I think we’re going to be having a much different conversation five years from now than we are today,” Berginnis says.
North Carolina is also joining a growing number of states in doing cutting-edge flood planning. The North Carolina Flood Resiliency Blueprint is a new initiative to use advanced computer modeling to help communities understand how different flood projects could improve their safety. The effort is now being piloted for one community.
“It is a big undertaking,” says Will McDow is senior director for Climate Resilient Coasts and Watersheds at the Environmental Defense Fund. “It is not happening as fast as any of us would like, but I’m really excited that this will be a chance for communities to really understand their risk in a new way and to design solutions that could meet those risks.”
For communities like Asheville that face rebuilding after a disaster, having the tools to plan for future floods and storms could be the difference in saving lives in the future.
“We’re never going to eliminate all the risk,” McDow says. “But we can do better as we rebuild from these storms, as communities invest going forward in new infrastructure to make sure that we’re reducing risk for the people who live there.”
Paul B. Miller shops at The Market food pantry in Logan, Ohio on Dec. 9. Food aid was just one of many services offered here that faced disruption in 2025.
Rich-Joseph Facun for NPR
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Rich-Joseph Facun for NPR
LOGAN, Ohio – Before dawn, in a cold, blustery drizzle, a line forms outside a small, squat building on an open stretch of road on the outskirts of town.
“My heater quit working in my car,” Scott Skinner says good-naturedly to the next man in line. “Man, what kinda luck am I having.”
The building is called “The Market” because it has a food pantry, but Skinner and the others are here to sign up for heating assistance. He’s been calling for a month to get an appointment with no luck, so he showed up an hour ago to snag a walk-in slot.
The demand for help is more acute than usual because heating aid was suspended during the recent government shutdown. At the same time, SNAP food benefits were suspended for weeks, and some food pantry shoppers are still playing catch up.
One of those people is Lisa Murphy. She’s 61, disabled and relies on Social Security, and says it’s important to have “places like this that really help us.”
“I still owe my gas bill. I owe $298,” Murphy says. “It’s hard to buy food and pay my bills, too.”
Lisa Murphy grocery shops at The Market food pantry in Logan, Ohio. She’s still behind on bills after SNAP food benefits were paused for two weeks during the recent federal shutdown.
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A detail from Miller’s grocery cart; signs tell clients the number of items that can be taken.
Rich-Joseph Facun for NPR
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Rich-Joseph Facun for NPR
But even as need grows with rising costs and unemployment, local anti-poverty groups like the one that runs The Market say their work has been threatened as never before amid the Trump administration’s funding cuts, pauses and reversals targeting a long list of safety-net programs. The shutdown was only the latest disruption that forced them to scramble to keep operating.
And, they say, the year of chaos has left deep uncertainty over which programs may be hit next.
‘Emergency response mode’
The Market in Logan, Ohio, is part of Hocking Athens Perry Community Action – HAPCAP for short – one of a thousand such agencies across the country that have been around since the 1960s. They connect some 15 million people with housing, health care, food aid and much more.
At HAPCAP, services include Meals on Wheels, Head Start, a public bus system, employment help, and a food bank that serves 10 counties across southeast Appalachian Ohio.
It’s an impressive range, but this year that’s also made it a big target for federal funding cuts.
“Eighty percent of our funding comes from federal grants,” says executive director Kelly Hatas. The “worst day” of her career was back in January, when the Trump administration ordered a federal funding freeze, saying it wanted to shift priorities and promote efficiency.
“When we got that news we were in immediate emergency response mode, like, what are we going to do?” she says.
Kelly Hatas, executive director of Hocking Athens Perry Community Action (HAPCAP), talks with the child of a couple who are shopping at the food pantry. Hatas says the nonprofit has had to scramble all year as various safety-net programs were hit with federal funding cuts or pauses.
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Rich-Joseph Facun for NPR/www.facun.com
The most urgent threat was to six Head Start centers.
“Our Head Start director was on a call with all of her center coordinators telling them we’re laying everyone off tomorrow,” Hatas recalls. “And then there was some secondary information that was like, ‘Just kidding … Head Start is excluded.’”
That whiplash shook people’s trust. And the hits kept coming.
In March, the administration canceled or paused a billion dollars that helped food banks. In May, President Trump’s budget called for zeroing out Head Start and heating assistance, along with major cuts to other safety-net programs like rental aid. He also proposed eliminating the $770 million dollar Community Services Block Grant that directly supports these anti-poverty groups, including it in a list of “woke programs.”
Congress eventually funded many of those programs, but the Office of Management and Budget took months to get out the block grant money.
“OMB just decided not to spend it, totally usurping congressional authority,” says David Bradley, who advocates for these local groups with the National Community Action Foundation.
He says they’ve long had strong bipartisan support.
“So we’ve had two major fights with the administration,” he says. “We won them because Republicans helped.”
East Main Street in Logan, a small town in southeast Appalachian Ohio.
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Rich-Joseph Facun for NPR
In a statement, an OMB spokesperson said these anti-poverty programs fund “radically partisan activities, like teaching toddlers to be antiracist and ‘LGBTQIA+ welcoming.’” It also criticized a program that combined affordable housing with clean energy “in the pursuit of both economic and environmental justice.”
“President Trump ran on fiscal responsibility and ending wasteful DEI spending in government,” the statement says.“The American taxpayer should not be made to fund critical race theory.”
Health and Human Services spokesman Andrew Nixon said the agency “administers CSBG consistent with the funding levels Congress provides to support services for low-income families.”
Funding chaos and uncertainty
In Ohio, Hatas says the state has shifted money to help address federal funding crises as they’ve popped up to keep programs going. But the biggest challenge remains uncertainty.
“The panic and the just day-to-day not knowing what’s going to happen, is just really difficult,” she says.
Because of that, HAPCAP has scaled back some plans, including for a new Head Start facility and a much-needed homeless shelter. It’s also had to pull out of food distribution at schools because of a lack of staff. Some employees are leaving, worried about losing their jobs. Others have been laid off or had their hours trimmed.
“It cut my paychecks completely in half,” says Kelsey Sexton, who manages the front desk but was shifted to part-time in the fall. “We have a mortgage, a car payment. With Christmas coming, my husband was like, what are we going to do?”
She was bumped back up to full-time – but so far only temporarily – after the shutdown pause in SNAP payments brought a surge of people to the food pantry.
Losing a job can be extra tough in rural communities.
“We don’t really have jobs growing on trees … and so there’s nowhere for these folks to go,” says Megan Riddlebarger, who heads the Corporation for Ohio Appalachian Development (COAD) half an hour away in Athens.
Kelsey Sexton (left) had her hours as a desk clerk at HAPCAP cut in half. Megan Riddlebarger (right) heads the Corporation for Ohio Appalachian Development and says anti-poverty agencies are important for local economies in this rural region.
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Rich-Joseph Facun for NPR
She oversees federal funding for 17 antipoverty groups across the eastern part of the state, and says they’re important for rural economies.
“These aren’t just, like, people volunteering for fun,” she says. “These are some of the biggest businesses in town, buying most of the products that are bought and sold in the town.”
Helping people stay warm and at home
Down a flight of stairs from Riddlebarger’s office, five burly men at long desks take notes as Dave Freeman goes over how to properly install a water heater vent. It’s a refresher training class for inspectors, part of a weatherization assistance program the White House also wanted to end.
Freeman says many older homes in the area are full of cracks and crevices with almost no insulation.
“That house that you walk in (that) has the blanket at the stairway, so ‘Oh, honey, I haven’t been upstairs, it’s so cold up there,’” he says.
Weatherizing homes not only lets people live comfortably, it also saves them money.
“Say their electric bill goes down or gas bill goes down, they might be able to buy a pizza on a Saturday night,” Freeman says. “And that’s a big thing.”
Adam Murdock (left) attends attends a training class for weatherization inspectors at the Corporation for Ohio Appalachian Development.
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Rich-Joseph Facun for NPR
But COAD’s funding for weatherization was delayed months, which jeopardized staffing. “You can get paid to do similar work in the private sector, and so retaining that staff is already a challenge,” says Riddlebarger.
Most of the agencies she oversees were able to cover the gap until money finally came through in November. But she says it means squeezing what’s supposed to be a year-long program into about half that time “with the same expectations for performance reporting.”
Diana Eads’ volunteer job with COAD – which includes a small stipend – was also at risk earlier this year, when the Trump administration gutted AmeriCorps grants with little explanation. As part of the AmeriCorps Seniors companion program Eads visits and helps out low-income people.
“My companions have been elderly, they’re not able to get out,” she says. “They’re just one-step away from nursing home care.”
Diana Eads, 74, visits with elderly people as part of the AmeriCorps seniors program. When a funding cut threatened her small stipend for gas money, she told an 88-year-old woman who lives far away that she would keep visiting no matter what.
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Rich-Joseph Facun for NPR
If they were to land in a nursing home or assisted living, that could cost thousands of dollars a month in Medicaid spending. But Eads helps keep them at home for just $4 dollars an hour, to help cover gas or other small bills.
“Being rural, my one companion, it’s 56 miles roundtrip,” she says.
Riddlebarger managed to secure local philanthropic funding to keep operating, and after a legal challenge AmeriCorps federal funding was restored.
Through it all Eads reassured her companion, an 88-year old woman she’d been visiting for five years.
“I told her no matter what happened, I would not stop visiting,” Eads says. “That was important.”
A grim 2026 outlook
After a year struggling to keep serving those most in need, advocates say they don’t see much relief in site. Republicans in Congress passed major cuts to Medicaid and SNAP food aid and those will start to take hold.
The Trump administration also is considering dramatic limits to rental assistance and has laid out major cuts to long-term housing for people leaving homelessness, a move that faces a legal challenge.
On top of that, the administration’s mass firings and buyouts hit hard in offices that administer various safety-net programs.
The Market runs a food pantry and helps connect people with other services. In December, people seeking an appointment for heating assistance often line up outside before dawn.
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Rich-Joseph Facun for NPR
Riddlebarger says most anti-poverty funding already falls far short of the need, and making it even harder to help people is exhausting.
“Not knowing which of our many services we are going to be able to keep operating makes us waste valuable capacity trying to plug holes that shouldn’t be holes,” she says. “We’re just breaking the wheel and reinventing it at a great cost to all parties.”
People walk through the snow in Brooklyn after an overnight storm on Saturday in New York City.
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Spencer Platt/Getty Images
An intense cyclone system is fueling a mix of severe weather, including a winter storm that will impact upper parts of the United States.
Heavy snow, blizzards, extreme cold and damaging winds are likely to create hazardous conditions stretching from Montana east to Maine, and Texas north to Pennsylvania, according to the National Weather Service (NWS).
More than eight million people were under winter storm warnings from the NWS on Sunday afternoon. Nearly two million people were under blizzard warnings. Meteorologists warn that after winter weather Friday and Saturday, an arctic front clashing with warm air could rapidly intensify into a ‘bomb cyclone’ over the Midwest and Great Lakes through Monday. A ‘bomb cyclone’ or bombogenesis is a rapidly deepening area of low pressure that creates harsh weather conditions.
“We are anticipating some pretty big snows over the next 24 hours, especially across east central Minnesota to northern Wisconsin to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. A lot of those places will have 6-12 inches,” NWS Lead Forecaster Bob Oravec told NPR on Sunday.
Blizzard conditions will cause near zero visibility and possible power outages Sunday night though Monday evening in some locations in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, according to the NWS Marquette. A foot of snow or more is possible in areas along Lake Superior with 40 to 65 mile per hour winds, according to forecasts.
Marquette Mayor Paul Schloegel told NPR on Sunday the Marquette Board of Light & Power is prepared to handle any loss of electricity. He said in an email the main priority is keeping people safe.
“We tend to heed the advice of our weather forecasters and prepare to hunker down as needed,” Schloegel wrote. “As far as taking care of the snow, our extremely dedicated public works and MDOT crews do a great job taking care of our residents, they are true professionals. Roads are usually back to normal within 24 [hours].”
Schloegel said Marquette residents appreciate a good blizzard while taking precautions.
“We choose to live here for our love of [four] full seasons and appreciate the effect the greatest lake, Lake Superior, has on our climate,” he said.
Minnesota is also bracing for major impacts. Blizzard and winter storm warnings and advisories are in place for most of the state. As much as 10 inches of snow could fall in the Twin Cities and potentially life-threatening travel conditions are likely through early Monday morning, according to the NWS.
The ‘bomb cyclone’ is also sending cold temperatures below freezing.
Residents of Havre, Mont., about 45 miles south of the Canadian border, could feel wind chill values as low as 15 degrees below zero late Sunday. The actual temperature is forecast to fall to 2 degrees below zero.
Farther south in Dallas, Texas, temperatures are expected to drop dramatically from the 80s on Sunday to highs in the 40s on Monday, according to the NWS.
In the Northeast, freezing rain could cause travel problems, including icing in northern New England and northern New York state, late Sunday into Monday, according to Oravec.
When colder air moves into New York City early this week, remaining snow on the ground from the weekend storm will freeze and create further hazardous travel conditions, Oravec said.
Bob Kafka, a disabled Vietnam veteran, talks with an Austin Police Officer as he and others try to enter a hotel property.
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Bob Kafka, a renowned disability rights advocate, died at his Austin, Texas, home on Friday. He was 79 years old.
Kafka was an organizer with ADAPT (American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today), a group which advocates for policy change to support people with disabilities.
Mark Johnson, co-founder of ADAPT and a longtime friend of Kafka who confirmed his death, told NPR Kafka’s advocacy was as much about changing laws as it was changing lives.
“Maybe it was helping somebody tie their shoes and the next moment, maybe it was helping feed them, or maybe it was raising money through the fun run, or maybe it was negotiating with federal officials,” said Johnson.
Kafka was born in New York City, but spent most of his life in Texas. He was an Army veteran and fought in the Vietnam War.
Since being paralyzed from a 1973 car accident, Kafka, alongside his wife, Stephanie Thomas, prioritized seeking dignity for those with disabilities and helping others adjust to their new lives. Kafka could be seen at disability rights protests sporting a halo of white curls and an unruly beard.
“Very, very rarely do you find people that can, can do what needs to be done and not go around boasting about it,” said Johnson.
He also recalled the selfless nature of the community Kafka fostered, including how Thomas’ first instinct was to ask how he was feeling about losing a friend.
“I’m going, ‘Wait a minute, I’m calling you to ask you how you are,’” Johnson said.
Johnson remembered Kafka as a policy wonk who was as interested in the mechanics of federal bureaucracy as grassroots organizing. He said he hopes his friend will be honored for his work to influence change at all levels.
“If you mention disability to an average crowd, it’s gonna, think of something negative. Bob and others may help people make that shift,” Johnson said.
“They say claiming your identity – your full identity – can be very powerful, very liberating. And I think Bob was one of those people that’s been doing that for 50 years.”
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