I realized this because my cumulative walking mileage for 2024, expressed as a straight line, would extend from my Atlanta home to the suburbs north of Detroit, beyond Grosse Point and St. Clair Shores all the way up to West Bloomfield. To the south, it would extend all the way to Miami Beach. To the west, the line would extend past Fort Smith, Arkansas and well into the Choctaw and Cherokee Nations in Oklahoma.
I have several different walking routes I use to reduce potential boredom. Yesterday, I took a nearly 7-mile walk through my and adjacent neighborhoods, looping together parts of the Beltline and Memorial Park paths. The latter took me along Woodward Way, where I saw some of the devastation caused by Helene firsthand.
It was sobering to see how close some the really significant damage came to my own home, which was unscathed by the hurricane. Friday morning, from the shelter of my hotel room near Winder, I saw the police and fire departments use inflatable rafts to rescue residents along Woodward Way stranded in their homes by floodwater from Helene. Yesterday, while on my walk, I immediately recognized some of those homes from the news footage. The houses themselves didn't seem to suffer any structural damage, although I saw many of the residents emptying the contents of their garages and ground floors onto their lawns and driveways to help dry out their houses. There were many vacuum and carpet-cleaning contactors in front of the homes helping to rid them of residual floodwater and the mud and silt left behind by the storm.
There were many trees down, some probably knocked over by the winds, but more apparently downed to the floodwaters or streambank erosion along Peachtree Creek. Mud and silt all over the sidewalk and road were a good indicator of how high the floodwaters got as Peachtree Creek crested at record height.
I was able to play amateur sedimentologist as I walked. Still, quiet floodwaters deposit a layer of fine silt and mud after a flood, but moving, rushing water can move larger, coarser-grained sand and gravel. Peachtree Creek normally flows through a channel about 5 to 10 feet below the surrounding land, but when the creek crested a over 20 feet it jumped the channel and spilled over onto the surrounding property. In addition to all the mud and silt, I was surprised to see deposits of sand up above the stream channel, indicating that the flow had enough energy to lift the sand up out of the channel and onto the surrounding plain. Even more surprising, some of the sand beds left behind had ripple marks on the surface, which indicated that the water flowing outside of the channel had enough speed and velocity and was around long enough to shape the deposits. Ask a geologist to explain if you don't follow the significance.
But in any event, beyond being a smug, smart-ass amateur sedimentologist, I was struck by the suffering and hardships the residents were dealing with. To be sure, Woodward Way is an affluent neighborhood and I strongly doubt any of the residents weren't fully insured and financially capable of dealing with the storm's effects. But that wasn't the case everywhere hit by Helene. The storm left over 100 dead in Florida, Georgia, Tennessee and the Carolinas and may turn out to be one of the most damaging hurricanes in U.S. history.
The hardest hit areas were in western North Carolina, where the mountainous terrain forced the record rainfall into torrential floods along the valleys. At least 30 deaths occurred in Asheville's Buncombe County alone, and roads are washed out, including a portion of I-40. Cellphone, power and water service is disrupted, and rescuers still haven't been able to get to some of the most remote areas affected.
As I said, I was spared - no flooding, no fallen trees, and no power loss at my home - but it was a whole other story less than a mile away, and far, far more tragic in neighboring states.
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