SPINDALE, N.C. (WNCW) — Western North Carolina has always had unpredictable weather. But scientists who study the region say what residents are experiencing now goes beyond normal variability — and the data backs that up.
Nighttime temperatures are climbing. Rainfall is arriving in more extreme bursts, followed by longer stretches of drought. And Hurricane Helene, meteorologists say, was not simply bad luck — it was the mountains and the storm interacting in nearly the worst way possible.
“It's not the daytime maximum temperatures we're worried about,” said Sean Heuser, assistant state climatologist and manager of the North Carolina ECONet at the NC State Climate Office. “It's the nighttime minimum temperature.”
Heuser, who has tracked the region's weather data for nearly two decades, said fewer cool nights mean less recovery time from summer heat. That trend showed up starkly this year, according to Dr. Baker Perry, a professor of climatology and the Nevada state climatologist who grew up in Haywood County and still maintains two weather stations in the mountains.
“This past five-day period, the first five days of July, were the warmest on record across western North Carolina,” Perry said. “Those nighttime temperatures are staying high.”
The extremes are also arriving earlier in the year, Heuser said. Asheville hit 80 degrees on March 6 this year — the earliest 80-degree day recorded in the city this century, according to Heuser.
Nowhere is the region's vulnerability clearer than in Hurricane Helene, which devastated parts of western North Carolina. Perry said the storm's catastrophic rainfall totals were tied directly to the terrain.
“The winds were perfectly perpendicular to the terrain, which maximized that orographic lifting,” Perry said, referring to the process by which mountains force moist air upward, wringing out heavier rainfall. “That resulted in these exceptional rainfall totals right along the Blue Ridge escarpment.”
Heuser compared Helene to a series of hurricanes that hit the Carolinas in 2004.
“Take those three storms that happened in oh-four, and instead of putting it over a two-to-three week window, put it over a 36-hour window,” Heuser said. “That's what happened with Helene.”
The problem, he said, isn't that such storms are new — it's that their impacts are intensifying.
“It's not that it doesn't happen,” Heuser said. “It's that the impacts of that are now exponential.”
That danger is compounded by the region's geography, Heuser said. Unlike coastal areas, where floodwater has room to disperse, the mountains can trap it.
“There aren't escape routes a lot of times in the mountains,” Heuser said. “You get these events, and people get cut off.”
Scientists say the region is increasingly swinging between extremes — a pattern Heuser calls “weather whiplash.”
“We've been calling it weather whiplash, where we go from extremely wet to extremely dry,” he said.
Perry said the phenomenon has a formal name in climate science.
“We're seeing intensification of the hydrologic cycle,” Perry said. “A scientist at UCLA calls it hydro-climatic whiplash — this transition, very abruptly, from extreme wetness to dryness.”
Rainfall and drought data referenced by Dr. Baker Perry and Sean Heuser, NC State Climate Office.
That whiplash carries its own risks. After Helene stripped hillsides bare and left behind downed trees, fire danger has grown in a region unaccustomed to it, Heuser said.
“Fire weather is becoming much more of a problem,” he said. “Now you're concerned that any one little thing can spark a fire.”
The shifts also carry a public health cost, particularly for people who work outdoors, Heuser said.
“I would be concerned most with heat health,” he said. “If it doesn't get cool enough at night, your body can't rest and recover.”
The changing climate is also reshaping two of the region's major industries: agriculture and tourism, Heuser said.
“Wetter conditions for a longer period can lead to disease growth in crops, so growers have to start breeding crops that are more resistant to drought,” he said. Ski resorts, meanwhile, are seeing less natural snow. “You're not getting the snow, so ski resorts are having to create more snow, which becomes a problem in itself in terms of cost.”
Water utilities are facing similar pressure, Heuser said, sometimes having to prepare for opposite extremes within the same year.
“Are you holding reservoirs higher due to potential drought, or do you lower them in the event of a tropical storm?” he said. “In 2024, they had to do both.”
Agriculture, tourism and water-management impacts cited by Sean Heuser, NC State Climate Office.
Understanding these shifts requires reliable, long-term data, Perry said — something that is harder to come by in mountainous terrain.
“Long-term monitoring stations and weather station networks are so important everywhere, but especially so in mountains, because of the really high spatial variability,” Perry said.
Heuser said residents can contribute to that effort directly.
“There are plenty of resources to get that information,” he said. “You can get involved as a citizen scientist through different organizations to help with precipitation data collection, which helps us greatly.”
Perry said artificial intelligence is beginning to reshape forecasting as well, though its usefulness has limits. AI-based models are already outperforming traditional physics-based forecasts for average, everyday conditions, he said. But for extreme events like Helene, the technology remains less reliable.
“There's still some more uncertainty with the extreme events,” Perry said, “because if an event has not been observed and we don't have sufficient data, the AI models are not going to handle that as well.”
Heuser said one of the most common misunderstandings he encounters is the difference between a single weather event and a long-term climate trend. He compares it to baseball.
“Climate's like your season batting average,” he said. “Weather is what he does that one time at bat. The guy may be a 155 hitter, but he can still hit a home run — it just doesn't happen as often.”
The same confusion applies to rainfall totals, he said. A year can look statistically normal on paper while still containing damaging extremes.
“You're still well below normal for the year, but those three wet months still probably cause a lot more havoc than the rest of the year combined,” Heuser said.
Despite years of research, both scientists said there is still much to learn about how climate change will continue to affect the mountains.
“Mountains are full of surprises,” Perry said. “There are so many things that we still don't understand, and that limits our ability to predict what may come in the future.”
Mountain environments, he added, tend to produce extremes found almost nowhere else on Earth.
“Mountains are the most extreme environments on the planet,” Perry said. “This is where we see the heaviest rainfall, the highest winds outside the polar regions.”
For now, Heuser said, the clearest advice for residents is to stay prepared for uncertainty.
“In terms of climate change, just — expect the unexpected,” he said. “Prepare for the worst, hope for the best, and always have a plan in place.”