Residents of a mountain town in western North Carolina still recovering from the effects of Hurricane Helen are currently enduring a cold snap as they woke up to snow on Wednesday morning.
Waynesville resident Jeanne Tierney Wavruska told Fox News Digital: “The devastation around here is heartbreaking, but it's really terrible when you think about the people who are losing power and having their homes destroyed.” He added that he was concerned about his neighbors.
“Due to the water damage, we were literally sleeping in the hut and it was very cold,” she added. “This was last week and the temperatures weren't too bad. I'm really grateful we only had a few weeks of power outage and only a little bit of water damage.”
Ms. Wavruska, a Florida native, and her husband from Massachusetts began moving to the area in September 2023. They settled on the property in March of this year, which will mark their “first winter at 4,100 feet.”
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A chart on Jean Tierney Wavruska's property in Waynesville, North Carolina, shows how much snow fell when she woke up on October 16, 2024. (Jeanne Tierney Wableska)
fox carolina A first weather warning was issued for Wednesday and Thursday, calling it the “coldest air so far this season.” Temperatures in the mountains are expected to be in the 20s, raising concerns about people still without electricity.
As a result, cold weather evacuation shelters were opened. buncombe county, There, Helen swept away homes in Asheville, a city of about 94,000 people, knocked out power and destroyed critical parts of the water system. The storm destroyed remote towns and killed at least 246 people across the Appalachians. In the Appalachian Mountains, washed away bridges and roads have made large-scale cleanup efforts difficult. This was the worst hurricane to hit the continental United States since Katrina in 2005.
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Animals huddle together in the cold on October 16, 2024, in snow-covered Waynesville, North Carolina. (Jeanne Tierney Wableska)
Vavruska hopes people visiting the area understand that there is still a lot to do.
Snow has fallen in the mountains of western North Carolina less than three weeks after Hurricane Helen struck the region. (Jeanne Tierney Wableska)
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“I'm worried that the town is rebuilding so quickly that people forget there's still a lot of blight on the side of the highway,” she says.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
