As western North Carolina continues to recover from Helene, the science behind the storm's damage and what we can learn to be better prepared for the future is being studied.
Through this series, Spectrum News 1 spoke with a geologist, climate scientists and others and also paid a visit to an environmental science class at the North Carolina School for Science and Math, or NCSSM, in Morganton.
Class instructor Lindsay Smith described her students as the best and brightest in the state.
Her students are high school juniors and seniors from across North Carolina. NCSSM's Morganton campus opened in 2022 and enrolls around 300 students. The school also has a campus in Durham that was founded in 1980. That campus enrolls 680 students. NCSSM was recently named one of the top public high schools in the country by website niche.com.
Just over a month after Helene, Smith was discussing warm ocean currents and their impacts on storms with her class.
She told us she's had a lot more questions about climate change since Helene hit.
Those are questions from students like Alina Rector from McDowell County.
“My old elementary school was flooded to the roof. All you could see was the white ceiling filled with floodwater. There were pictures of shops all along Main Street with broken glass and mud on the floor," Rector said.
The students had just left for fall break when Helene hit. The school's campus sustained minimal damage, but it was a different story in nearby communities.
Rector said the damage was a wake up call. She wants to be an environmental scientist. Her Helene experience may play a role in her future research.
“I think it would be really interesting to study how these kinds of storms impact all kinds of animals behavior and relations with each other," Rector explained.
While all the students at NCSSM will not directly study weather and climate science, Helene is something they will think about for a long time.
Gabe Benites Torño is also from McDowell County. He wants to become a veterinarian, but that does not mean he's not worried about future storms.
“Is stuff like this going to be more frequent? All of these questions are going through my mind, and that’s why I maybe want to learn a bit more about meteorology," Benites said.
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