This really reminds me of some things I saw on a recent trip to Washington. I climbed Mt. St. Helens there, and from the Crater Rim, you could see the North Fork Toutle, still carved, scarred and littered with debris and dead trees. The size of this debris flow is not quite as big as some lahars get, but some of the videos from the St. Helens lahars really give a good picture of what debris flows like this look like.
Great video. My heart breaks for the family that runs buck creek trout pond. Great people. I’ve been dealing with my own problems on the other side of the mountain and haven’t even thought of buck creek until I watched this video. May God bless them and help them.
Interesting video, I live in Watauga across the street from one of the large landslides in our area. It took out our power lines, crews are still working so people have access to their homes. The road was under 12 feet of mud, rock, and trees. Spoke to the farmer that saw it come down. His rain gauge was at 24” for the day before it rolled down around 11am, sounded like a freight train.
I believe it. Can you tell me roughly where you're located (not after an address; just a road or intersection or something or nearby church so I can find where it is)? It's amazing and scary how much stuff comes out of the mountain with one of these.
@@TheGeoModels hello, Vanderpool intersection with Linda lane in Vilas NC 28692. The slide started near the top if the mountain above Linda lane and stopped maybe 300 meters before reading Vanderpool.
Thank you for posting this information. It’s stunning. I was in S Asheville when this hit and use the word ‘ferocious’ when I describe the wind and rain we saw. I cannot imagine what was happening at the top of these ridge lines where most of the wind and precipitation occurred.
Thank you so much for doing this video. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed all of your videos, as a layperson appreciator, whitewater paddler and resident of the area. As someone who lives on Buck creek (below the lake), this was especially meaningful for me to watch. Somehow, understanding it better gives me a sense of “closure” to all the damage and loss.
amazing area. enjoyed working up there. it has a dramatic landslide history, and this is just another installment with terrible human consequence. these flows were big.
Mark was climbing over boulders the size of cars, mixed with huge tree rootballs, tangled tree trunks and there right in front of him is a rattler sunning itself on a huge boulder. Wow, it's challenging climbing that mess.
I saw that video! He saw a bear at close range too, staring at him through the brush - while he was sitting down having lunch. I'm amazed at how calm he remains in those dicey situations. His videos of various areas post-Helene are just amazing and so well done. A real-world perspective of GeoModels' informative videos. He clambers through all that wreckage like it's nothing at all!
I drove over Buck Creek on US Hwy 70 two hours ago, and it's still the color of chocolate milk. We've barely had a single drop of rain since Helene, and it's still running that color. Just unreal. Edit: I would like to see a Curtis Creek video. I've fished that river from bottom to top and it's my home river for fishing. Newberry Creek as well. I'm sure everything up there is beyond devastated. It was always my place of peace.
Great video as always. I hiked up the Flume slide in the WMNF a month ago and this helps put into perspective how it and a lot of the slides in the WMNF and Adirondacks were formed.
I’m sure you’ve read John McPhee’s 1989 book “The Control of Nature: Los Angeles Against the Mountains.” I never imagined we would be seeing debris flows in North Carolina, but those who are interested in the topic would find this short but excellent work fascinating.
Thank you so much for these videos! So much to learn about the terrain and what we can do going forward. My dad near Fairview finally got internet back today, and I have sent him links to all your previous stuff.
We are literally seeing geological change happen in real time. Thank you for another amazing geology lesson. Will you be doing another video about the Burnsville area? It was pretty much destroyed, I heard.
I live just across Buck creek on the Yancey county side. Buck creek is absolutely destroyed. It looks like something out of a movie where a nuke has been dropped
Very helpful and informative video. Will check out Honeycutt too. This is all new to me but I always feel better when I learn sbout something that worries or scares me. So, thank you for your time and efforts. Very much appreciated. I'm sure I'll be taking about your videos with other interested parties who live in Asheville.
I’d always take 80 up buck creek from here in AVL to Mt Mitchell via Marion. Always a lot quieter than the BRP via Craggy gardens and less pushbikes that way too. Such a shame. Cheers for another great video
@ 6:30 mark. My brother helped manage that trout farm for 10 years. He was in his trailer on the farm as the debris flow occurred. He was miraculously not physically harmed but his trailer, vehicle and all of his personal belongings were taken by Helene. The entire farm was claimed by Helene
I have to wonder if, during the early hours of Helene’s extreme rainfall, smaller, up-slope debris-flows might have dammed the creeks and impounded water. Then, that debris dam would burst, releasing the original debris, but with a torrent of impounded water pushing it down the valleys. (Here in mountainous Albemarle County, Virginia, in its southern half, and more-so in neighboring Nelson County, the high-up mountain-scars from the 1969 Camille Disaster are still visible….mostly rock, the finer debris long eroded.)
One thing that seems to be lost in the debris flow discussion is every ridge and drainage area continued to feed additional water even if it didn't cause additional debris flows it's still adding flood water and minor debris. Is this a significant factor in the length of the major flows?
The land will heal, Nelson County, Virginia, received an unofficial 28 inches of rain in August 1969, adding several feet of mud to the river banks, still the tomb of dozens of Virginians, carrying away the sparsely settled valleys, closing the mountain passes from Foothills Parkway, TN, to Swift Run Gap, Virginia. Look at the Tye River Valley today and the slopes of the Priest Mountain and Three Ridges.
The Debris flows start where the rock piles covered covered and perculate the earth and super saturate then burst/slough off at the now new spring head, there is a drone vid in chimney rock u can see where the Debris flow started and 20 days later there is a trickle of ground water coming out starting as a new spring surprisingly not a stream
Will be done. some of it may first get presented at the fundraiser/race substitute down in the cove next weekend. it and big hungry will get done on here though
it should pair up with this. basically the idea is that the big dirt area he sees used to be a nice little stream full of rocks with trees and rhododendron on the banks. All was scoured and, to disastrous effect, went into the Craigtown community. Same general idea when he hikes Chimney Rock
@@TheGeoModels yes I can see that watching chimney rock rn - it gives such a different perspective combined w/ your intel makes it make lots more sense appreciate it. Such beautiful Country, breaks my heart there’s so many effected by this disaster... Praying for All - Def appreciate the ref to his channel it so made the complete pic imho - I would have never imagined all I “understand” now - love the mountains but like everything w/ Mother Nature ~ She’s to b respected 🙌
I am in no way suggesting any good associated with this disaster. But wouldn't these slide areas be good areas to pan for gold now? I'm sure people who do pan for gold have already thought of this. Nature did what they would not been allowed to do.
The entire Tennessee River basin is huge . Floods have been happening here since forever . That's why the Tennessee Valley Authority was created . The whole concept of 100 year floods is somewhat misleading . The weather is going to do what the weather is going to do and when it is going to do it .
I traveled from TN to Lenoir, NC on Thursday. The storm damage was everywhere! The flood left mud levels so deep it looked like a wasteland. The trees had racing stripes with mud up 20 to 30 feet and Fall colors up from there. There was minimal damage on Grandfather Mountain. I am hearing large homeless cities were washed away. This means the body count is far worse than they are reporting. The size of the rocks that were moved are the size of cars!
Im in Greene County, Tennessee. I realize this is possibly a stupid question but I’ll take my chances. There are stretches of the Nolichucky here along farmland that don’t have the giant boulders and whitewater. Its more like deeper water lined with trees on either side. Well, those trees are gone. All of them. Miles and miles and miles of trees just gone. When the grasses grow back on the banks, it’ll look like a giant version of a grass creek. With all the trees gone, is it going to make these kinds of areas along the river more prone to flooding?
26:20 you are mentioning past slides and when they may have happened I am near Barnardsville - north of the Blue Ridge Parkway Helene scoured this area exactly as you described with the debris field visible as you exit the valley An Ivy Creek tributary Stoney Fork comes off the Parkway and had a mudslide a few years ago (and has closed the road since) There are (where) three different debris fields blocking the road No one is allowed into the Big Ivy area Did this previous slide debris make things worse for the folks who live on Stoney Fork?
hard to say. those valleys have flat areas in the bottom from collecting there debris flows over time. the helene ones may get be steered somewhat by deposits of older ones, but ultimately with that much rain a lot of stuff is going to go
NC-DOT is going to have to build retaining walls and-or cut into the hillsides for much of those roadways which abutted the creeks; There’s no ledge left.
I am confused by the term "geologic damage" it seems more like natural erosion. These natural events have been causing these mountains to erode for thousands of years. Hopefully it will help local communities to realize that their 100 year flood zoning is incorrect and they do not rebuild these areas without consideration of our new age extreme weather patterns. I enjoy your videos.
@@WalterSmolenski Not thousands of years. The Appalachians are one of the oldest mountain ranges in the world, 480 million years old. They were once as high as the Rockies.
Natural things can cause damage. Ripping up vegetation instantly and causing resurfacing , whether by other forms of nature or not, it is damage to the current environment and life forms. Erosion and stuff is damage. He said scarring specifically bc of the extent of the forces. Meteorites impacting a planet are natural for a planet in our solar system but they leave damage to the planet when they hit it. No?
This event event imo has killed the southern Appalachians, the amount if extreme and rapid erosion is going to have amazingly huge long term effects to the geography and over all environment of WNC and eastern Tenn.
AVL native, motorcyclist on these roads 1974-2014. Phenomenal Alpine experience in the Western Hemisphere. The first tragedy was global climate change and the second was the loss of my favorite environs.
I'm glad to see that it wasn't as bad as some of the landslides & floods that have been happening in India & central/south America where half the mountain slides down into the valley. Comparatively, Appalachia didn't get whammied as hard, but it definitely got hit harder than it should've been with that funky weather pattern. There might even be a storm similar to Helene coming at the beginning of November, up from central America, but that's still early data.
Thank you so much for doing this video. RIP Julie le Roux, a local artist, and the victim in this debris flow.
friend I am glad the vid reached you. hope it offered some of the explanation you were seeking. best wishes your way in a tough time.
This really reminds me of some things I saw on a recent trip to Washington. I climbed Mt. St. Helens there, and from the Crater Rim, you could see the North Fork Toutle, still carved, scarred and littered with debris and dead trees. The size of this debris flow is not quite as big as some lahars get, but some of the videos from the St. Helens lahars really give a good picture of what debris flows like this look like.
Great video. My heart breaks for the family that runs buck creek trout pond. Great people. I’ve been dealing with my own problems on the other side of the mountain and haven’t even thought of buck creek until I watched this video. May God bless them and help them.
Interesting video, I live in Watauga across the street from one of the large landslides in our area. It took out our power lines, crews are still working so people have access to their homes. The road was under 12 feet of mud, rock, and trees. Spoke to the farmer that saw it come down. His rain gauge was at 24” for the day before it rolled down around 11am, sounded like a freight train.
I believe it. Can you tell me roughly where you're located (not after an address; just a road or intersection or something or nearby church so I can find where it is)? It's amazing and scary how much stuff comes out of the mountain with one of these.
@@TheGeoModels hello, Vanderpool intersection with Linda lane in Vilas NC 28692. The slide started near the top if the mountain above Linda lane and stopped maybe 300 meters before reading Vanderpool.
Thank you for posting this information. It’s stunning. I was in S Asheville when this hit and use the word ‘ferocious’ when I describe the wind and rain we saw. I cannot imagine what was happening at the top of these ridge lines where most of the wind and precipitation occurred.
epic event, to say the least
Thank you so much for doing this video. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed all of your videos, as a layperson appreciator, whitewater paddler and resident of the area. As someone who lives on Buck creek (below the lake), this was especially meaningful for me to watch. Somehow, understanding it better gives me a sense of “closure” to all the damage and loss.
amazing area. enjoyed working up there. it has a dramatic landslide history, and this is just another installment with terrible human consequence. these flows were big.
Mark was climbing over boulders the size of cars, mixed with huge tree rootballs, tangled tree trunks and there right in front of him is a rattler sunning itself on a huge boulder. Wow, it's challenging climbing that mess.
I saw that video! He saw a bear at close range too, staring at him through the brush - while he was sitting down having lunch. I'm amazed at how calm he remains in those dicey situations. His videos of various areas post-Helene are just amazing and so well done. A real-world perspective of GeoModels' informative videos. He clambers through all that wreckage like it's nothing at all!
I drove over Buck Creek on US Hwy 70 two hours ago, and it's still the color of chocolate milk. We've barely had a single drop of rain since Helene, and it's still running that color. Just unreal.
Edit: I would like to see a Curtis Creek video. I've fished that river from bottom to top and it's my home river for fishing. Newberry Creek as well. I'm sure everything up there is beyond devastated. It was always my place of peace.
Tennessee River at Knoxville is still brown.
Great video as always. I hiked up the Flume slide in the WMNF a month ago and this helps put into perspective how it and a lot of the slides in the WMNF and Adirondacks were formed.
I’m sure you’ve read John McPhee’s 1989 book “The Control of Nature: Los Angeles Against the Mountains.” I never imagined we would be seeing debris flows in North Carolina, but those who are interested in the topic would find this short but excellent work fascinating.
Thank you so much for these videos! So much to learn about the terrain and what we can do going forward. My dad near Fairview finally got internet back today, and I have sent him links to all your previous stuff.
I hope he finds them useful. thanks for passing them along. Fairview got hit hard as anywhere--glad they're getting utilities set back up out there
We are literally seeing geological change happen in real time. Thank you for another amazing geology lesson. Will you be doing another video about the Burnsville area? It was pretty much destroyed, I heard.
Yes, as horrible as this event was, it lets me understand how some of the geologic sights one sees along the Appalachian Trail happened.
I live just across Buck creek on the Yancey county side. Buck creek is absolutely destroyed. It looks like something out of a movie where a nuke has been dropped
Makes you realize how insignificant we are and how fleeting our experience is on this mortal plane.
We are the waking universe, uniquely able to look upon creation in all of it’s glory
There needs to be so many more videos and lectures on this. Truly so much to learn and to really understand or imagine
thank you
The answer is YES, there’s permanent rearrangement of the topography.
When you drop a JDAM in an old mine at the top of a mountain.
Very helpful and informative video. Will check out Honeycutt too.
This is all new to me but I always feel better when I learn sbout something that worries or scares me. So, thank you for your time and efforts. Very much appreciated. I'm sure I'll be taking about your videos with other interested parties who live in Asheville.
I’d always take 80 up buck creek from here in AVL to Mt Mitchell via Marion. Always a lot quieter than the BRP via Craggy gardens and less pushbikes that way too. Such a shame. Cheers for another great video
You need to add some happy little trees 😊 I couldn’t resist
😆 we do need happy little trees
@ 6:30 mark. My brother helped manage that trout farm for 10 years. He was in his trailer on the farm as the debris flow occurred. He was miraculously not physically harmed but his trailer, vehicle and all of his personal belongings were taken by Helene. The entire farm was claimed by Helene
I am glad he made it. anyone on that creek in that area when it happened was lucky to get out
I have to wonder if, during the early hours of Helene’s extreme rainfall, smaller, up-slope debris-flows might have dammed the creeks and impounded water. Then, that debris dam would burst, releasing the original debris, but with a torrent of impounded water pushing it down the valleys. (Here in mountainous Albemarle County, Virginia, in its southern half, and more-so in neighboring Nelson County, the high-up mountain-scars from the 1969 Camille Disaster are still visible….mostly rock, the finer debris long eroded.)
One thing that seems to be lost in the debris flow discussion is every ridge and drainage area continued to feed additional water even if it didn't cause additional debris flows it's still adding flood water and minor debris. Is this a significant factor in the length of the major flows?
Thank you brother.
The land will heal, Nelson County, Virginia, received an unofficial 28 inches of rain in August 1969, adding several feet of mud to the river banks, still the tomb of dozens of Virginians, carrying away the sparsely settled valleys, closing the mountain passes from Foothills Parkway, TN, to Swift Run Gap, Virginia. Look at the Tye River Valley today and the slopes of the Priest Mountain and Three Ridges.
good perspective. Nelson was equally an end of days event, for sure, just in a smaller area.
Thank you! Any chance you could do one on the green river?
Great video, appreciate your knowledge very much.
The Debris flows start where the rock piles covered covered and perculate the earth and super saturate then burst/slough off at the now new spring head, there is a drone vid in chimney rock u can see where the Debris flow started and 20 days later there is a trickle of ground water coming out starting as a new spring surprisingly not a stream
Mark Hunnycut did a great job his videos are excellent
Could you do a video on the Green River/Green River cove area?
Will be done. some of it may first get presented at the fundraiser/race substitute down in the cove next weekend. it and big hungry will get done on here though
If u could overlay the doppler radar u would have a best seller
A 'before' layer, an 'after' layer, a 'radar' layer and the 'total rainfall/time' layer in one program
Im asking for it now from a professor gis friend
Another very informative video - TY Again - going to ck out Honeycutt 🙏
it should pair up with this. basically the idea is that the big dirt area he sees used to be a nice little stream full of rocks with trees and rhododendron on the banks. All was scoured and, to disastrous effect, went into the Craigtown community. Same general idea when he hikes Chimney Rock
@@TheGeoModels yes I can see that watching chimney rock rn - it gives such a different perspective combined w/ your intel makes it make lots more sense appreciate it. Such beautiful Country, breaks my heart there’s so many effected by this disaster... Praying for All - Def appreciate the ref to his channel it so made the complete pic imho - I would have never imagined all I “understand” now - love the mountains but like everything w/ Mother Nature ~ She’s to b respected 🙌
@@TheGeoModels watching his other video titled the dangerous debris field one matches up w/ what u said 🎯✔️🎯Wow / the water had to b 15 ft - OMG 🤌😬🥹😳😮
Just a fyi...."the trout farm" was purchased and was Mountain Stream RV campground. Completely leveled now !!!
I am in no way suggesting any good associated with this disaster. But wouldn't these slide areas be good areas to pan for gold now? I'm sure people who do pan for gold have already thought of this. Nature did what they would not been allowed to do.
The earth is in a state of constant change. It's why the Appalachians look as they do now.
No need for Netflix when you get these vids.
The entire Tennessee River basin is huge . Floods have been happening here since forever . That's why the Tennessee Valley Authority was created . The whole concept of 100 year floods is somewhat misleading . The weather is going to do what the weather is going to do and when it is going to do it .
Hey! I scored that A+ 102% on my imaginary college exam! 😂 Thanks for another great video!
This information is absolutely baffling and mesmerizing (if that makes sense) to learn about! Always look forward to these videos!
I have rented an aframe next to Buck Creek many times.
I traveled from TN to Lenoir, NC on Thursday. The storm damage was everywhere! The flood left mud levels so deep it looked like a wasteland. The trees had racing stripes with mud up 20 to 30 feet and Fall colors up from there. There was minimal damage on Grandfather Mountain. I am hearing large homeless cities were washed away. This means the body count is far worse than they are reporting. The size of the rocks that were moved are the size of cars!
a storm like this Carrie’s unimaginable power
Im in Greene County, Tennessee. I realize this is possibly a stupid question but I’ll take my chances. There are stretches of the Nolichucky here along farmland that don’t have the giant boulders and whitewater. Its more like deeper water lined with trees on either side. Well, those trees are gone. All of them. Miles and miles and miles of trees just gone. When the grasses grow back on the banks, it’ll look like a giant version of a grass creek. With all the trees gone, is it going to make these kinds of areas along the river more prone to flooding?
No
If they leave the Rivers carved out as they are now, they may be able to handle bigger floods in the future.
What was the estimate? 40 Trillion gallons that got dumped on the region?
I am still looking for Lidar sources. If you could help, I would appreciate it.
Will the scars still transport debris/mud/rocks until grasses/flora start re-growing and holding the soil? In other ;heavy rains'.
Almost certainly. The topography isn’t settled back down.
26:20 you are mentioning past slides and when they may have happened
I am near Barnardsville - north of the Blue Ridge Parkway
Helene scoured this area exactly as you described with the debris field visible as you exit the valley
An Ivy Creek tributary Stoney Fork comes off the Parkway and had a mudslide a few years ago
(and has closed the road since)
There are (where) three different debris fields blocking the road
No one is allowed into the Big Ivy area
Did this previous slide debris make things worse for the folks who live on Stoney Fork?
hard to say. those valleys have flat areas in the bottom from collecting there debris flows over time. the helene ones may get be steered somewhat by deposits of older ones, but ultimately with that much rain a lot of stuff is going to go
Will the creek channels slowly fill back in over time? The parts that were scoured away
Yep, give it a few hundred years and it’ll start to look normal again.
How old are these Lidar scans - pre-Helene I assume?
Thanks for these. I appreciate your work.
Storm Chaser Aaron Rigsby has a drone video showing lots of leafless and fallen trees near Asheville.
I just watched that
Any one know what happened with
Triple C Campground? My family had a camper site there years ago. I assume it's gone now 😞
A lahar type event?
no doubt
“Permanent geologic damage”. 😂 😂
Now that is an oxymoron!
French Broad Basin?
NC-DOT is going to have to build retaining walls and-or cut into the hillsides for much of those roadways which abutted the creeks; There’s no ledge left.
I am confused by the term "geologic damage" it seems more like natural erosion. These natural events have been causing these mountains to erode for thousands of years. Hopefully it will help local communities to realize that their 100 year flood zoning is incorrect and they do not rebuild these areas without consideration of our new age extreme weather patterns. I enjoy your videos.
@@WalterSmolenski Not thousands of years. The Appalachians are one of the oldest mountain ranges in the world, 480 million years old. They were once as high as the Rockies.
Natural things can cause damage. Ripping up vegetation instantly and causing resurfacing , whether by other forms of nature or not, it is damage to the current environment and life forms. Erosion and stuff is damage. He said scarring specifically bc of the extent of the forces. Meteorites impacting a planet are natural for a planet in our solar system but they leave damage to the planet when they hit it. No?
There is no new age of extreme weather patterns. Quit with the fear mongering propaganda
This event event imo has killed the southern Appalachians, the amount if extreme and rapid erosion is going to have amazingly huge long term effects to the geography and over all environment of WNC and eastern Tenn.
AVL native, motorcyclist on these roads 1974-2014. Phenomenal Alpine experience in the Western Hemisphere. The first tragedy was global climate change and the second was the loss of my favorite environs.
it’s a big hit to the area
Speaking of changing the mountain side, how much does it change things to have these giant houses built and big chunks of land cleared off.
Yes.
Anyone who lives next to any size body of water should have flood insurance ….by the way.
Well sure it has you can't put all that debris back where it came from.
I'm glad to see that it wasn't as bad as some of the landslides & floods that have been happening in India & central/south America where half the mountain slides down into the valley. Comparatively, Appalachia didn't get whammied as hard, but it definitely got hit harder than it should've been with that funky weather pattern.
There might even be a storm similar to Helene coming at the beginning of November, up from central America, but that's still early data.
yes, this event is closer to something you would see at low latitudes in places with more active tectonics. that’s why it’s such a shock.