Last week, September 23rd through the 26th I was in NC.
Monday was terrific at the Billy Graham Library; Tuesday was an OK day, but Wednesday was stressful; that's when the rains started.
We were trying to find the Blue Ridge Parkway Skyline Drive entrance; GPS got us spun around leaving Ashville.
We stopped at the Black Mountain visitor center to ask for directions. After joking with the lady telling her, my parents took me here as a kid, then in 2000 I came back, but there was a freak weather system with
such heavy fog I couldn't see anything, and now I am here, and it's supposed to rain. She said well, you may not see it again. I just got off the phone with my friend who works with FEMA, and he said to get prepared. It's going to be bad, really bad. But she never suggested turning around and heading out. We arrived at the entrance of Skyline Drive, but they had locked the gates. I was upset, thinking I had driven through worse, so I got back on 40 E to where we stayed when the heavens opened...
This was just the start of the hurricane; it was madness on the freeway, driving through such heavy downpours it was hard to see with the highway already partially flooded.
The beginning of this video shows where we were on Wednesday.
The photos are what I took while driving
This is where I received the info from the visitor center, in Black Mountain that also was hit with catastrophic flooding from Helene that had a critical dam breech that wiped out Chimney Rock. I am fairly certain the visitor center is wiped out or severely damaged.
