mountaintops in the Smokies — a highly abnormal occurrence for October, she notes. “As there appears to be an increase in extreme events, and the amount of water vapor available in the atmosphere for those things, you have to wonder: What’s happened in the last 100 years may not be what’s going to happen in the next 100 years,” says McCown.
eXTreme weATHer In AsHevILLe
6.40“ 10/18/1879 5.38“ 10/25/1918
onLy THe BeGInnInG Frozen water falling from the sky poses different kinds of hazards. Jerry veHaun, director of Buncombe County’s Emergency Services Department, says the biggest natural disaster he’s seen in 40 years there was the March 1993 blizzard that dropped 14 inches of snow at the National Weather Service’s Asheville Regional Airport station (the third-highest total on record) and much more in the mountains (Mount Mitchell reported 50 inches and 14-foot drifts).
FUeL sUPPLIes TAnk In both 2005 and 2008, Asheville experienced acute gas shortages when the Gulf Coast was struck by hurricanes. WNC depends on a few pipelines coming from that area. Disrupt those, and gas gets scarce fast. In the wake of those shortages, the city adopted an aggressive plan to address such situations. Asheville now has reserves that, under 2008 conditions, would support normal operations for 15 days, reduced services for three weeks, and emergency conservation measures for six to eight weeks. City officials have also brokered deals with suppliers in other regions to keep at least some fuel coming in during a crisis.
rAInIesT DAys on reCorD
16.3“ 12/03/1971
12 DECEMBER 19 - DECEMBER 25, 2012 • mountainx.com
15“ 03/02/1872 03/03/1906
on THe BeAT 14“ 03/13/1993 01/07/1988
snowIesT DAys
66 mPH 04/15/2007
Dubbed the “Storm of the Century,” the extreme weather event delivered massive amounts of snow and rain from New England down to the Gulf Coast, causing more than 270 deaths across the eastern U.S. Locally, VeHaun recalls, transportation was paralyzed for nearly a week and several transformers blew out, leaving thousands of residents without electricity or heat as temperatures plunged into the single digits. Buncombe County recorded seven fatalities, he notes. Hunkered down at work and sleepless for three days, VeHaun remembers, “We were trying to deal with people who didn’t have power. If you were on oxygen, you couldn’t generate oxygen. … Diabetics, trying to get medication to them if they were out. It surprised me that we didn’t have more people freeze to death or die from heart attacks.” Blizzards didn’t pose any problems last year: It was the only winter since 1964 with-
5.18“ 10/18/1964
64 mPH 03/13/1993
out measurable snowfall at the Asheville Airport, which opened that year. But the winters of 2009-10 and 2010-11 had total snowfall well above the 12.5 inch annual average — and loads of associated problems. Meanwhile, the WNC-based Ray’s Weather Center is predicting a slightly colder, snowier winter than normal, though its “Winter 2012-13 Fearless Forecast” also advises readers not to “put much stock in any forecast for the weather from two to five months out, including this one.” McCown agrees, saying forecasters are severely limited in what they can predict more than seven days out. “Meteorology is actually a relatively new science, and we’re still learning how to do it — it is so complex,” she notes. “Our atmosphere is really a fluid system, so we’re really just beginning to get a grip on a lot of this stuff.” A lot of research, she explains, is now focused on determining whether the rising cost of severe weather damage is due to an increase in storms, in human population and development, or both.
60 mPH 02/19/1972
HIGHesT wInD sPeeDs
soUrCe: PAmeLA mCCown, InsTITUTe For CLImATe eDUCATIon, A-B TeCH
The Asheville Police Department has 241 personnel (including 207 sworn officers), assisted by 150 volunteers. The Patrol Division (the people most likely to be on the street should disaster strike), comprises 125 officers, about a quarter of whom are on the street at any given time.
In other words, McCown continues, “Is it because the weather’s getting more extreme or because we have more exposure to these disasters, just because we have more people and built infrastructure than we used to?”
THe “wHAT IF” BUsIness For all the threats posed by natural disasters, it’s the more directly human-triggered scenarios that keep some first responders up at night. On average, the Red Cross deals with two house fires a day in WNC and upstate S.C., helping provide emergency housing, food and other necessities. The threat increases in winter, notes Scoles, due to problems with home heating systems. But in terms of plausible larger-scale catastrophes that Red Cross staffers train for, Scoles says his biggest fear is dealing with a nuclear emergency. There are eight nuclear power plants within 200 miles of Asheville — the distance within which the American Thyroid Association found “excessive” risk of thyroid cancer among Ukrainian residents after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. The closest plant to Asheville is Duke Energy’s Oconee Nuclear Station, just 62