th-cam.com/video/3Sh-VYmg7-E/w-d-xo.html provides a look at how colleagues at Appalachian Landslide Consultants and I have studied the traces of past flood and slide events in western North Carolina. The linked video was done in 2023 and shows what a railroad man recorded after visiting Mitchell County in the wake of the 1901 flood.
On behalf of geo professionals everywhere, thank you for taking the time to make these videos, put them out to the public, and explain these phenomena. Keep up the great work!
On behalf regular folk ty as well. Amazing to see up close. The amount of material moved is just astounding. I understand now why people say they had no warning.
As a retired geophysicist in Asheville, I find the GeoModels videos indispensable for explaining to friends and neighbors what happened here. And with this video the field geologist in me, who is no longer physically able to withstand the rigors of the pursuit, gets to vicariously share Philip's exhilaration at witnessing geologic events unfold real-time!
Imagine if you were running from this, and were able to get yourself high enough up a tree to witness this???? OMG! Thank you so much. I could listen to you all day
On behalf of interested public, extreme armchair, and amateur geologists; a Huge Thank You for recording your trip to the field and your "lesson" given here. This is of incredible importance and quite interesting too.
Yes, I agree that us public cannot comprehend what our beautiful mountains can do all by themselves during extreme saturation of the land without this visual explanation. Be careful and God Bless you for showing & telling us.❤
Your perspective on this video makes it so much more clear how roads, bridges and whole towns were wiped out so quickly and completely. Really interesting and terrifying!
I'm a mechanical engineer and whitewater paddler. Your earlier, macro-level videos were great. But this is another level. I can almost see the flows and they are mind-boggling. It makes the biggest whitewater I ever saw look mild. As if that wouldn't be bad enough, the composite debris has twice the density and is chock-full of heavy solids and, eventually, trees. The kinetic energy is staggering. The explanation about morphology is also an eye-opener. If you were digging in that soil, it would seem like concrete. You wouldn't guess how unstable it could be when super-saturated.
It's not so tough digging in Appalachia. I worked for a general contractor in Transylvania County as a carpenter. That said we did almost all of the work when building a custom home. After the lot has been cleared we hand dug the footers for the foundations with matock and shovel, matock being the preferred weapon of choice. Encounter granite boulders we'd drill into said placing rebar in those. Prior to #Helene2024 I always thought of Appalachia, a safe place to be. Blizzard of '93 yeah that was intense. Been caught in Asheville along Swannanoa River Road when the river rose out of it's banks. Living in Pisgah Forest my neighbor and I sat on her back steps and watched the French Broad River flooding, getting up close to the backs of our homes. My perspective about landslides has expanded drastically since #Helene. Naive of me to be of the mindset: " Yeah, that's what happens in the Pigeon River Gorge over in Haywood County along I-40." I'm grateful that all of my family, friends, acquaintances, Frenemies, and haters are all present and accounted for.
@@romeoortegaiii2299 I am glad to hear all the people you know are present after Helene. Extreme rainfall rates on steep slopes change the debris flow hazard level dramatically as Philip has explained so well, and downstream areas are also at risk.
Too bad most geological theory is incorrect. Especially Intrusive basalt columnar jointing theory, both vertical and horizontal, Tafoni theory and geological concretion theory. ALL WRONG! Many so called sedimentary deposits with uplift are incorrect as well. Soooooo many theories are garbage! All people do is regurgitate! Rinse and repeat. I have another channel where I debunk these theories with thousands of hours of research with boots on the ground.. And i do White water as well and also Log and cut timber and do hard ass work that would make most men cry for their mommy. good day
My son lives in Johnson City. We thought he would be safe up on a mountain but maybe not. He did lose two or three trees to wind. I feel for all those people. Great video.
Except …. If the conditions are so perfect for this, why did it never happen before? Or often? (I lived on a CA cliffside with similar conditions, which was well known to move?) Only 10 - 11” of rainfall reported on the day? Was it # of days of rainfall that made the difference? Fun geeking out with you…. Thanks 🙏🏻
We spent today checking our property in Bat Cave, NC. It WAS a pristine place on the river. There is NOTHING but rock left. We knew it was bad but the amount of soil that no longer exist is shocking. It will never look the same again. Your insight as to how/what happened is so valuable. 1/2 a mountains is gone. Contact me to walk the property.
I did caves in Bat Cave NC back in the day with Graham, Simmons, & (I think?) Goggins. Was such a beautiful area. Breaks my heart to know it's been ravaged.
I watched this in bed last night and couldn't comment, but this is one of the best videos you have done to show how horrific the landslides were up close. I was so nervous watching you guys walk around on it, knowing we have watches/warnings that many areas are precarious after Helene to this day. This is a once in many lifetime storms and any and all documentation of it is so important. And the area is so extensive it's mindboggling!! I do appreciate you showing us just how huge these landslides were! I knew they were big but lordy.
Those saplings still rooted in the ground really goes to show how important plants are in slope stabilization. I gotta imagine erosion and sediment are going to be issues downstream of these debris flow scars for years and decades to come
Yeah it is far too easy to underestimate the role plants play in slope stabilization which is perhaps best seen by the devastating landslides that tend to follow in rain events after a major fire or several years after a clear cut on a slope. Far too often some fool with too much money and influence decides to cut down trees to get a better view of a river etc. and then destruction follows as the slope collapses. And don't get me started about all the landscapers bringing those heavy riding mowers on steep embankments leading to mass wasting of the slopes and leaving a mess of an area with exposed rocks and pebbles(alluvial soils), roots of any remaining nearby trees and formerly buried utilities on barren slopes with occasional tufts of grass clinging on above the concave depressions. It is hideous but landscapers just will not leave things alone resulting in the slope gradually getting into say the parking lot or the street piece by piece.
The best video explaining what happened! Having an itty bitty partner across the gorge really brought home the vastness of the debris flows. Just unbelievable! I learned so much. Thank you.
Sir, prior to Helene I had never heard of a 'Debris Flow.' Now several weeks later, I've watched all your videos and been in sheer awe of what Mother Nature can deliver. On behalf of all the 'lay' people out there, THANK YOU for making educational and super interesting videos. Please keep up the great work.
You sould take a metal detector everywhere. All the debris fields could have lost items that will only get covered by time. Just think of returning a silver mirror to a grand daughter that lost everything her grandmother ever owned.
These videos are incredibly educational. Thank you so much for taking us with you out in the field to show us what you have been describing in other post-Helene videos. Keep making these and I'll keep watching!
@@mderline4412 They would probably be of more interest to older students who were earth science, geology nerds. Although it wouldn't hurt anyone, of any age, to learn. I'm 71 and still fascinated by all of this. And yes, I was, and am, one of those nerds
@@bdickinson6751 *The presentation edited a bit. This video and almost any one other of his videos on this event. A narrative explaining The forces and enormity of Nature. Weather, Geology, Fluid Dynamics, Probabilities! A narrative, all applied to a recent, tangible event, with obvious consequence! Told well, You don't have to be a nerd to appreciate that. This is the stuff that inspires!*
Up at the top of the debris flow where it all started, you were showing the bedrock and its flat, layered, characteristics and I had a sudden flash of recognition! I spend my summers in Clearfield County, PA, where there was a tremendous amount of strip mining that had the tops of the mountains torn open from horizon to horizon for decades. We young cousins spent summer days in those "strippin" canyons, finding caves and slides and all manner of wildlife. By the mid-1970s, federal legislation required the companies to repair what they had damaged. Over a two year period, they were all erased, filled in, and otherwise eliminated. I had forgotten what it was like back then. But when you picked up those pieces of bedrock at the top of the flow, I had a powerful memory rush that put me in those "strippins" again. I realized emotionally something I knew intellectually: your mountains and my mountains were part of the same geological past and the proof was in your hands! Maybe trivial, but the emotional impact of that connection was powerful.
As a south Louisiana flatlander who occasionally visits the mountains, your videos show how it is nearly impossible to predict where one's house might survive these events and where they won't! Great information - thanks for your videos!
@@FYMASMD Just because someone can do an analysis following these floods and landslides doesn't mean they can predict them all. You're a f$$king idiot!
Being from the mountains of Eastern TN, this is something you see all over, but I never knew what it was until this video. You see these plate rocks in all the creeks and even springs. Shows just how the geology can cause a high precipitation event (which is very common here as much of East TN can reach 100+ inches of rain a year. Until TVA, flooding happened here every year, multiple times per year. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and field research with us. We have a lot of sinks in our creeks. The dry summers expose them. Quite scary to see a normal 30yd wide creek disappear into the Earth and pop-up mere feet or a mile downstream. Those stacked rock strata are just everywhere here.
As a geologist (UNCW '95 grad) this is fascinating. As an environmental chemist in my career, we have been busy testing drinking water from the affected WNC area as the systems come back online.Thanks for the updates and field verification.
Yes volunteers and locals alike have become I’ll. Also, horses and caliber dogs have died from the contaminated water. Everyone Shouid move imo as it’s toxic so they can’t take showers due to the skin being the largest organ in the body absorbing all the nuclear wastes that have been lied about that proof from the semi found buried and all the empty barrels, sewage, industrial and household chemicals plus the dead animals and bodies -unbelievably toxic! There Shouid be a water tower out in alreadyvwith that being fixed by the army corp of engineers etc versus them shoveling mud out of a fudge shoooe etc. Just doesn’t make any sense .
This video was so valuable to me. I saw the video of the couple standing on the porch talking and in 10 seconds debri & water wiped out their land. I could not imagine how that happened. I kept thinking, "Where did that river come from? How did a river come barreling out of the hills of trees when clearly their elevation was above flood level?" Finding this video explained everything. I am going to keep watching it to learn more.
This guys TH-cam channel is amazing. I’ve been watching him for about a year now. His videos were addictive even before all these horrible debris flows happened.
You realize that streams, ponds & other pockets of water exist at all elevations, so why would this be out of the realm of imagination when the ground gets too saturated to hold onto that much water & inevitably floods?...
@AkbarZeb-p6f I grew up in the mountains and never personally witnessed something that I was seeing for the first time at a high elevation. It was shocking to watch it happen, where the principal of "never build in a flood zone" does not apply. I am sure it was shocking mainly because no one has seen this, at least with in a 1,000 years.
Truly amazing.....I had a hard time visualizing millions of years of erosion on our planet. Especially when reading about ancient Glacial Lake Missoula emptying and the change of the landscape after. Thank you for sharing as it helps to understand geology and the power of water. I pray this never happens to the fine folks in that area again.
It is almost incomprehensible to imagine the width, depth, and speed of these flows to cause this effect and phenomenon. Thank you for sharing this video and information.
Yes, GREAT introduction, and even "GREATER" that there was someone down in that creek bed area, for comparison...when I saw the human, and hearing your explanation of the mud flowing so fast it banked the corner THAT HIGH!!! That's crazy!,Sadly, that lends some explanation at to WHY their are STILL people missing! Sadly, some certainly will never be found...😥
16:04 that shale has been saturated and then there was hydraulic pressure from the huge amount of throughflow, this increases loading whilst reducing friction between the substrate/regolith. Thanks for bringing this to us all
It would be really cool to see you and Mark Huneycutt do a collab in North Carolina. Both of y’all have been educating people on the impacts of Helene but from different points of view. He’s been on the ground and you’ve been explaining how it happened. Truly grateful to both of you for the in-depth coverage of this disaster.
Agreed - Mark Huneycutt showed that first debris flow where it turned the corner and raised 16ft. He also had drone footage of the channel. Both of your videos are fascinating!!
Years ago I watched a vid on the Frank Slide (Turtle Mountain) and the engineers showed how water turns things into super sliders. Its like greasing your brakes. That must have been centuries of debris and detritus on that forest floor. And I will say when your friend was wandering about I think the elevation might have been more than you think. I cannot imagine the roar it made when it slid.Just terrifying.
I live in central NC so Ive been following your videos. The sheer MASS of displaced soil and rock is hard to comprehend. Quite awe inspiring to witness such a force of nature and how it changes the earth. So sad, because it will take a lifetime for the valleys to heal, - and even then they won't be the same because the topsoil is gone
Been modeling and mapping extreme flooding events for a few years, and sometimes it all feels rather theoretical. It is formidable to see the effects and changes to the landscape of these events in real life. Thank you for sharing your insights and on the ground experience with us.
It so much depends on where you are. I live on Hawaii Island on 3000 year old (lava) bedrock and get 150-200 " of rain per year where I am. Nothing happens right here. Go a few miles and things flood, we get land slides and roads get cut off.
I'm curious what the rainfall depth and intensity was. Maybe this beat the record? "Smethport, PA on July 17, 1942. A post-event survey by the Weather Bureau provided a widely accepted maximum storm rainfall of 34.50 inches within a 12 hour period, of which an estimated 30.60 inches fell in just 6 hours." What he shows from Helene is what was described in the PA newspapers in July 1942. Mountain sides let loose etc. The rain was described as ropes from the clouds.
You're doing a great job teaching and documenting. Thank you for your hard work and for taking the time to post publicly here on youtube. I was 9 years old when Mt. St. Helens erupted in 1980. I can remember the dust on our cars all the way down in NE Arkansas. This footage reminds me of the footage from Mt. St. Helens of the devastation caused by the mudslides that resulted from that eruption. These mudslides may not be as big as those were, but still, to even be in the same conversation speaks to how devastating Hurricane Helene was. And the synchronicity does not escape me either. Helene. Helens. 44 years. Reality if far more strange than fiction.
The amount of knowledge that we gain from careful and nonbiased examination of events like Mt. St. Helens and Helene is staggering. It confirms the story that the Grand Canyon tells about the Biblical flood account.
It was pretty terrifying. I looked out the window in the middle of the night and it was almost pitch black, but for what looked like a waterfall. ( that’s the best way I know to describe it). At that point all I could do was sit with my dogs and wait for it to end, praying we didn’t get washed away.
Excellent exposition of how these landslides formed - I learned a lot from this video. What's most surprising to me is how close the first "blowout" shown appears to be to the ridgeline. Not really on the side of a steep slope or downstream of lots of water flow in normal weather, not a place that normally gets enough precipitation to set this in motion. And the super-elevation flows where tributaries come in! Wow. Thanks for the video!
yep, it’s nearly at the ridge crest. that type of slide occurs only in the rowdiest rain events. just about any Appalachian mega-rain event has a bunch of them associated with it.
I never expected to see Bedrock in my lifetime. Makes sense, how you presented this information. I thought bedrock would have been humongous rock and not in those layers you showed us. Some of what I saw in this video was striped...like the old trees that are..... lost the word... dehydrated & still present...petrified!!! Really astonishing. Thank you very much. Hopefully this will educate many of us AND keep people from looking for themselves!
Thanks for another excellent video. Something that continues to cross my mind with these debris flows is that they seem to behave a lot like a wet slab avalanche.
I really appreciate your geologic explanations of origin of the devastation from Helene. I'm a bad student of geology (one class at Chapel Hill) but enjoy being in the field, hiking and doing amateur radio in the mountains. Your explanations are incredibly helpful, illuminating and highlighting the incredible force of nature upon our world. Thank you for taking the time to do these videos. Also, appreciate your low key, friendly style.
Appreciate this. It helps illustrate the materials, their consistency, their point of origin, and the inertia they can build. Sort of a time bomb just waiting for hundreds of years waiting on an extreme rainfall event. This was fascinating.
Yes, the research this will prompt will try to understand if you can examine a mountain slope and see if it is "loaded" with material and more apt to fail. We look for old slides as evidence for instability, but maybe you should look for places that don't have them because they are up next...
@@TheGeoModels That's a scary thought. Any of the old hollows have the same potential and sadly it's the hollows where people build. I heard one woman tell about being hit by a very short flow as she had her back to it. She was one of the fortunate ones. As someone else said here, some who didn't will likely not be found. Thank you for your videos. I lived in the area for many years and never dreamed anything like this could happen. Your videos are definitely educational.
I have learned so much from Philip. I grew up at the foot of the Blue Ridge and had no idea what the Appalachians were capable of doing. He is a great communicater. Anyone who lives in such an area needs to be educated as to what could happen in the future.
Your videos are so helpful for me to understand what happened. They are just as valuable than the "this is gone, that is gone" ones. They put a perspective on the others. Thank you so much.
The power of nature is absolutely incredible! It can be such a destructive force and in this case it was. To see your colleague walking the debris field really gives it scale. WOW! It changed the topography of that mountain and has left an unusual beauty. I would love to see Mr. Prince come back to this site in 5 years to see how it's changed from now. Then do a comparison video. Thank you sir for taking us along. I was fascinated to say the least!
Coming from someone who took one geology class in college and ABSOLUTELY LOVES this area... THANK YOU!! Having only learned a small part of geology and having been to this area thousands of times it puts the magnitude of this storm into perspective. I'm completely heartbroken for the sweet people of this area. Praying for their endurance as this will take years to recover from. THANK YOU SO VERY MUCH FOR THE VIDEOS.
Same here 🙋♀️. I took a geology class ( in 1972 😂 ) for electives and retained just enough knowledge to understand most of the terminology he uses so really fascinating to watch his videos.
The similarities between an avalanche and these debris flows is amazing.That first slope basically got overloaded and slid on a weaker smooth surface.The historic avalanche in the Conundrum valley outside of Aspen in 2019 had the same exact characteristics.
Im not a geologist. I'm a retired Firefighter. But I found this video remarkably interesting. The power of Mother Nature when she get's pissed is shocking. My heart goes out to the people of NC. Especially the landowners who have lost thousands of acres. Who are now unable to access the other side. You have a new subscriber. Please post the next video!!
glad you found it interesting! that was Jennifer in the field with me. she and Stephen sort of kept landslide work alive in North Carolina after state funded work on it got shut down. they did a fine job with it. great to work with them appalachianlandslide.com/about-us/
@@TheGeoModelsthanks. It saddens me that research work and study in this important field loses funding at the State level. Indeed at any level. I grieve for the growing loss of trust in scientific knowledge and it's important applications. 👍🌏
Hard catchments, line small ponds high up, cabins have rain tanks, and diversion channel around the fountain terrace they are placed on. Landslides in Nepal are frightening. Sand bag with tarp when anticipation of long storm. To make temporary ponds.
Very glad I found your video! Thanks so much for putting this out there, Philip. Fantastic explanation of the events. I wanted to be a geologist, but instead went the petroleum engineer route for the job opportunities. Going out and surveying the landscape like you are doing (and knowing what your are looking for) has been my unfulfilled dream. The physics part of geology is what facinates me. I'm sure this was as fulfilling for you as it would be for me.
I’d like to see where this all ended? Where did it stop when it quit moving down the mountain. You are so wonderful to watch and learn from. Thank you! I’ve learned a lot from you…
Dude, I’ve spent my summers in the toe river valley for years. Your info in real time was incredibly valuable to me. It’s always good to know what’s happening around us and beneath our feet. The remnants of this will remind us for our lifetimes and many more. Thank you for sharing this with us and for putting the time into the videos 🤙🏻
Thank you. Just ... thank you. This video was more chilling than any horror film I've ever seen -- and it didn't need to show a single pile of splinters that used to be someone's home to evoke that emotion. Informative, and potentially important in trying to explain to non-scientists the peripheral effects of today's shifting climate. Thank you also to your anonymous colleague for helping to indicate scale. I don't kow if this was planned and deliberate, but seeing her/him gave a far more sense of scale than descriptions of "thirty feet". You did good work here.
@@jonathanclark257 So we moved on from blaming cloud seeding, haarp, and lasers to suggesting there were aircraft dropping bombs in BFE WNC during a hurricane? My brother in Christ, in this very video you can see the start of two of these debris flow events. Do they look like craters? “But there were earthquakes!” Wow, it’s almost like there were massive amounts of mud hurtling down the mountainside. Maybe, just maybe, those were the earthquakes? How does “wow, that was such an insane amount of debris it registered on seismographs” become “those earthquakes were bombs that triggered the flows”? I get it makes you feel clever, to be the among the select few who know the “truth”, but the world just ain’t that complicated.
Excellent job of panning camera instead of jumping around. Makes sticking with your video to the end a pleasure. The technical content is just as good and comprehendible. I will take this video lesson with me me to use my i phone in the future.
Your videos have been so helpful. This one helped me realize the enormity of the slides. Mind boggling. Thank you for taking the time to share this with us.
Wow, thank you for the field trip! It’s far more impressive, and mind blowing to see it on the ground! It’s incredible to imagine the amount of material being displaced, and the amount of energy that was generated in the process!
Thank you so much for sharing and helping us understand what happened. I appreciate you so much! Its so devastating. But, we who live here needed to know how this happened. Thank you! Thank you! Ive subscribed!!! Please keep these coming!!!🏞
I used to live off of Bald Rock Road and wish I could see how that slope fared in this storm. There was a spring above our house, in a large apple orchard, and easy access to 5 gallons a minute of water for our local well. Someone had built two newer homes in what I now believe to be the drainage channel which might have flowed west toward the Eastern Continental Divide. Before we moved, we'd had a storm which gave us 12+ inches and destroyed a bit of Bald Ridge Road where a small bridge had spanned a lovely little creek. This was more than a decade ago--but it was enough to send us packing.
Those plates look like shale. No wonder there was so much shifting with all of that land with all that water! This video is mind blowing! Thank you so much for all of your videos! I spent a lot of time growing up in the Western Carolina mountains. The power of water is crazy! Everything is totally reshaped! My heart hurts so bad. This is still all so unreal that it happened! All those poor trees. Thank you again so much for your videos!
as a visual learning, these videos you put out have answered a lot of questions and made those answer sticks a thousand times more than reading has ever done for me on geology. thank you.
Absolutely finominal, as a retired Science teacher having an eagle eye view of these slides and the geological make up of the mountains one sees on Google Earth blows my mind! During this video, a view across the mountain chain was breath taking. A granite based mountain of the Rockies rests at my feet. Keep up these fantastic scholarly videos.
Mesmerizing. Having the occasional 'person for scale' tied together all the elements of your analysis and the mind boggling scale this disaster. This has certainly filled my goal of learning one new thing every day. Thank you for sharing you time, energy, and expertise.
Your opening scene is the same place Mark Huneycutt showed us a couple of weeks after the storm, I remember he also commented on how the flow was moving so fast it couldn't make the turn to the right and piled up on that far hill before tearing off down the stream channel. This is one of the most incredible things I have ever seen and trying to picture all that mud, water and debris at the time of the flow is beyond my comprehension.
As a geologist, I cannot express how amazing it is to see geology "happening" in real time. After being so used to "short" time frames meaning half a million years, I appreciate learning how the geologic formations actually came to be. Thank you for your expertise and time!
Thank you! I'm amazed at the damage! As a teen I witness the "Johnstown, Pa" flood... Also my father was on the team to reconstruct and build, the safety systems for downtown Pittsburgh. For flood control in the early 1960's. Warren Ohio
Holy cow. It's one thing watching your narrated 3D MS Paint drawings, but it's a whole other thing seeing it in person. It kinda puts into perspective the aftermath of the anomalous flooding we received up here in Reading, PA in July 2023, and why they are still rebuilding more than a year later. I mean, it's nothing like on the scale of Helene, but it's eerily similar. I don't think our weathered bedrock is as platey as it is down there, but I haven't actually been up there to check. I think I might have to see if I can find similar scouring up in our hills. Super neat, thanks Dr. Prince!
Thank you for your detailed videos. Seeing the landscape, the mud flow paths, along with your explanation of the depth and velocity of the flow makes my heart hurt even more for everyone and everything in the path. The absolute devastation is horrific. Love and prayers to everyone affected.
I've watched a lot of the other videos you've about this, but the initiation is really what I couldn't grasp. This completely cleared that up for me, and now that I understand it the rest of it as it went down actually makes more sense as well. Thanks so much for these videos.
Fascinating! Thank you for taking us up the mountain. Brilliant demonstration and explanation of the event. This really helps me understand the epic scale of damage.
Just absolutely fantastic work putting the illustrations together and then taking the time to show us the actual debris flows. Just extremely enjoyable! Thank you!!!
Living out west in the cascade range And knowing the location of this My heart sank when that system dumped all that water. The channels are so tight down there man. Its amazing anyone survived it really. I appreciate the study on the origin points dude. Was curious as to how it gained all the debris. Keep rockin it brother
Yikes! That is the most scary (the damage) and most beautiful (the exposed bedrock) occurrence to even comprehend and contemplate! Incredible video! 👏 👏 👏 I had to watch it twice! What a lesson to learn! I can't imagine how long it would take for all those saplings to replenish the land. That's wild 😮
It is amazing to see exactly how and why the devastation was so immense below. I've seen pictures of some of the slides, but they give no perspective of height/width/depth. And it's difficult to understand where all the boulders and multi-feet of mud and rock came from that is seen in the wiped-out towns and communities! One video I saw was of a man in Bat Cave, NC who is ~6' tall, standing on what was the original roadway and behind him is almost 7' wall of mud. It was difficult to understand how and why that could have piled that high. So seeing this video puts that, and the extent of the damage seen in so many areas, into perspective. I really feel the insurance companies need to understand this was not a flood. Thank you very much for taking the time to explain all this to the layman.
The multi-day rain certainly saturated the upper layers of the forested soils (lots of clay?) to the bedrock below, in a way that when Helene rains arrived, that extra rain volume in a matter of an hour or two created enough weight that the friction between the bedrock and unconsolidated loose rock and soil was certainly viscous enough to become "slicker than a whistle." Maybe that expression originated in these hills! 😮
Great on-the-ground view of this set of debris flows. Those super-elevation areas are amazing. It would be helpful if you could provide the location where you filmed.
I found this video to be fascinating. Thank you for making it. The sheer power of the debris is, honestly, horrifying. It appears that the topography is completely different now. Again, thank you for making this video.
I was thinking the same thing. 1 single catastrophic event can cause the equivalent of thousands of years worth of natural erosion. I think about the Grand Canyon a lot and how one single catastrophic event may have been the creator of that feature, rather than millions of years of erosion like many would like us to believe.
This is very interesting, as someone who studied creeks and streams for gold prospecting. When the vegetation grows back the evidence will be covered and no one will be the wiser.
Makes you want to explore and pan for gold and Indian arrowheads may be uncovered now. Have fun, be safe, and I hope you find great stuff. If not, it'll be fun anyway. Goodluck.
it made a bunch of debris flows up behind bent creek! mt Mitchell too. might do a video on the bent creek ones someday. they are interesting in LiDAR imagery.
3 feet deep x 100 feet wide x 4000 feet long (underestimated napkin math) with a density roughly 5x of water = 210,000 tons ! To put that in perspective, something equivalent to 21, 100 car fully loaded coal trains whizzing by at 60mph !!! Two aircraft carriers being passed at double their flank speed... 😵💫 Every 747 on the planet simultaneously taxing by on takeoff... edit: Somebody must have an infrasound recording of those slides?
Great content. Thanks for taking the time to put this together. A lot of people (myself included) are interested to see this type of detailed, informed, boots on the ground narrative about how these types of rainfall events look once the landscape calms slightly from the initial shock.
It is incredible to see what exactly what happened in the landscape! Drone footage would be even more revealing as to the scope of the damage caused, but it is apparent just how massive these debris flows were. Incredible work by the way. Very informative and educational. Thank you for putting this information together.
th-cam.com/video/3Sh-VYmg7-E/w-d-xo.html provides a look at how colleagues at Appalachian Landslide Consultants and I have studied the traces of past flood and slide events in western North Carolina. The linked video was done in 2023 and shows what a railroad man recorded after visiting Mitchell County in the wake of the 1901 flood.
On behalf of geo professionals everywhere, thank you for taking the time to make these videos, put them out to the public, and explain these phenomena. Keep up the great work!
appreciate it. trying to do what I can and still do on the ground response too. important to keep folks thinking about this stuff.
@@TheGeoModels❤
On behalf regular folk ty as well. Amazing to see up close. The amount of material moved is just astounding. I understand now why people say they had no warning.
Remarkable, Thank You.
I don’t know much about geology but I find it very interesting. Wish I would have done more with it when I was younger
As a retired geophysicist in Asheville, I find the GeoModels videos indispensable for explaining to friends and neighbors what happened here. And with this video the field geologist in me, who is no longer physically able to withstand the rigors of the pursuit, gets to vicariously share Philip's exhilaration at witnessing geologic events unfold real-time!
Really like having your colleague wandering in the background as a reference for size.
Imagine if you were running from this, and were able to get yourself high enough up a tree to witness this???? OMG! Thank you so much. I could listen to you all day
On behalf of interested public, extreme armchair, and amateur geologists; a Huge Thank You for recording your trip to the field and your "lesson" given here.
This is of incredible importance and quite interesting too.
glad it's useful
Thank you so much!!! What a fascinating lesson!!!!
Omg!!!! This man is beyond stunning!!! I want to put my face next to the arch of his foot!!!!
@@TheGeoModelssub,it to USGS. AND LOCAL COLLEGES. WHO MAJOR IN FLOOD WATER LAND. DEVELOPMENT
Yes, I agree that us public cannot comprehend what our beautiful mountains can do all by themselves during extreme saturation of the land without this visual explanation. Be careful and God Bless you for showing & telling us.❤
Your perspective on this video makes it so much more clear how roads, bridges and whole towns were wiped out so quickly and completely. Really interesting and terrifying!
Good comment.
as an Appalachian American I appreciate you teaching the world about our geology, really enjoy the on the ground video.
As someone who did not have a clue, thank you. Great information.
I'm a mechanical engineer and whitewater paddler. Your earlier, macro-level videos were great. But this is another level. I can almost see the flows and they are mind-boggling. It makes the biggest whitewater I ever saw look mild. As if that wouldn't be bad enough, the composite debris has twice the density and is chock-full of heavy solids and, eventually, trees. The kinetic energy is staggering. The explanation about morphology is also an eye-opener. If you were digging in that soil, it would seem like concrete. You wouldn't guess how unstable it could be when super-saturated.
It's not so tough digging in Appalachia.
I worked for a general contractor in Transylvania County as a carpenter.
That said we did almost all of the work when building a custom home.
After the lot has been cleared we hand dug the footers for the foundations with matock and shovel, matock being the preferred weapon of choice.
Encounter granite boulders we'd drill into said placing rebar in those.
Prior to #Helene2024 I always thought of Appalachia, a safe place to be.
Blizzard of '93 yeah that was intense. Been caught in Asheville along Swannanoa River Road when the river rose out of it's banks.
Living in Pisgah Forest my neighbor and I sat on her back steps and watched the French Broad River flooding, getting up close to the backs of our homes.
My perspective about landslides has expanded drastically since #Helene.
Naive of me to be of the mindset: " Yeah, that's what happens in the Pigeon River Gorge over in Haywood County along I-40."
I'm grateful that all of my family, friends, acquaintances, Frenemies, and haters are all present and accounted for.
@@romeoortegaiii2299 I am glad to hear all the people you know are present after Helene. Extreme rainfall rates on steep slopes change the debris flow hazard level dramatically as Philip has explained so well, and downstream areas are also at risk.
Too bad most geological theory is incorrect. Especially Intrusive basalt columnar jointing theory, both vertical and horizontal, Tafoni theory and geological concretion theory. ALL WRONG! Many so called sedimentary deposits with uplift are incorrect as well. Soooooo many theories are garbage! All people do is regurgitate! Rinse and repeat. I have another channel where I debunk these theories with thousands of hours of research with boots on the ground.. And i do White water as well and also Log and cut timber and do hard ass work that would make most men cry for their mommy. good day
My son lives in Johnson City. We thought he would be safe up on a mountain but maybe not. He did lose two or three trees to wind. I feel for all those people. Great video.
Except ….
If the conditions are so perfect for this,
why did it never happen before?
Or often?
(I lived on a CA cliffside with similar conditions,
which was well known to move?)
Only 10 - 11” of rainfall reported on the day?
Was it # of days of rainfall that made the difference?
Fun geeking out with you….
Thanks 🙏🏻
We spent today checking our property in Bat Cave, NC. It WAS a pristine place on the river. There is NOTHING but rock left. We knew it was bad but the amount of soil that no longer exist is shocking. It will never look the same again. Your insight as to how/what happened is so valuable. 1/2 a mountains is gone. Contact me to walk the property.
So sorry. God Bless you
I’m sorry. Water truly shapes all life. Lovingly and without mercy. Swift recovery to you and yours.
Omg!!!! This man is beyond stunning!!! I want to put my face next to the arch of his foot!!!!
Wtf you talking about? @@DakotaFord592
I did caves in Bat Cave NC back in the day with Graham, Simmons, & (I think?) Goggins. Was such a beautiful area. Breaks my heart to know it's been ravaged.
Thank god for people who actually know stuff.
Good comment. Knowledge from professionals is refreshing.
I watched this in bed last night and couldn't comment, but this is one of the best videos you have done to show how horrific the landslides were up close. I was so nervous watching you guys walk around on it, knowing we have watches/warnings that many areas are precarious after Helene to this day. This is a once in many lifetime storms and any and all documentation of it is so important. And the area is so extensive it's mindboggling!! I do appreciate you showing us just how huge these landslides were! I knew they were big but lordy.
Those saplings still rooted in the ground really goes to show how important plants are in slope stabilization. I gotta imagine erosion and sediment are going to be issues downstream of these debris flow scars for years and decades to come
Yeah it is far too easy to underestimate the role plants play in slope stabilization which is perhaps best seen by the devastating landslides that tend to follow in rain events after a major fire or several years after a clear cut on a slope. Far too often some fool with too much money and influence decides to cut down trees to get a better view of a river etc. and then destruction follows as the slope collapses.
And don't get me started about all the landscapers bringing those heavy riding mowers on steep embankments leading to mass wasting of the slopes and leaving a mess of an area with exposed rocks and pebbles(alluvial soils), roots of any remaining nearby trees and formerly buried utilities on barren slopes with occasional tufts of grass clinging on above the concave depressions. It is hideous but landscapers just will not leave things alone resulting in the slope gradually getting into say the parking lot or the street piece by piece.
Literally a mold or fungus could have thinned that area out leading to it happening.
The best video explaining what happened! Having an itty bitty partner across the gorge really brought home the vastness of the debris flows. Just unbelievable! I learned so much. Thank you.
Yea, 15:26. 😮
The washed out embankment didn't look large until you pointed out the person there. Changed the whole perspective. Wow!
Sir, prior to Helene I had never heard of a 'Debris Flow.' Now several weeks later, I've watched all your videos and been in sheer awe of what Mother Nature can deliver. On behalf of all the 'lay' people out there, THANK YOU for making educational and super interesting videos. Please keep up the great work.
Hope this is not your last video, I've really learned from them!
This was not actually "Mother Nature"
You may want to take a deep dive into weather modification. Lahaina, Paradise.......
I would be surface looking whare ever I went because you don't know when a artifact might show up
You sould take a metal detector everywhere. All the debris fields could have lost items that will only get covered by time. Just think of returning a silver mirror to a grand daughter that lost everything her grandmother ever owned.
These videos are incredibly educational. Thank you so much for taking us with you out in the field to show us what you have been describing in other post-Helene videos. Keep making these and I'll keep watching!
If we had this quality media when I was in school, I might have paid more attention to the subject!
@@nononsenseBennettHis videos should be shown in every grade school in the country!
@@mderline4412 They would probably be of more interest to older students who were earth science, geology nerds. Although it wouldn't hurt anyone, of any age, to learn. I'm 71 and still fascinated by all of this. And yes, I was, and am, one of those nerds
@@nononsenseBennett Not too late to learn.
@@bdickinson6751 *The presentation edited a bit. This video and almost any one other of his videos on this event. A narrative explaining The forces and enormity of Nature. Weather, Geology, Fluid Dynamics, Probabilities! A narrative, all applied to a recent, tangible event, with obvious consequence! Told well, You don't have to be a nerd to appreciate that. This is the stuff that inspires!*
Up at the top of the debris flow where it all started, you were showing the bedrock and its flat, layered, characteristics and I had a sudden flash of recognition! I spend my summers in Clearfield County, PA, where there was a tremendous amount of strip mining that had the tops of the mountains torn open from horizon to horizon for decades. We young cousins spent summer days in those "strippin" canyons, finding caves and slides and all manner of wildlife. By the mid-1970s, federal legislation required the companies to repair what they had damaged. Over a two year period, they were all erased, filled in, and otherwise eliminated. I had forgotten what it was like back then. But when you picked up those pieces of bedrock at the top of the flow, I had a powerful memory rush that put me in those "strippins" again. I realized emotionally something I knew intellectually: your mountains and my mountains were part of the same geological past and the proof was in your hands! Maybe trivial, but the emotional impact of that connection was powerful.
As a south Louisiana flatlander who occasionally visits the mountains, your videos show how it is nearly impossible to predict where one's house might survive these events and where they won't! Great information - thanks for your videos!
Hard to predict??? lol!!😂
Ok Beevis.
@@FYMASMD Just because someone can do an analysis following these floods and landslides doesn't mean they can predict them all. You're a f$$king idiot!
Being from the mountains of Eastern TN, this is something you see all over, but I never knew what it was until this video. You see these plate rocks in all the creeks and even springs. Shows just how the geology can cause a high precipitation event (which is very common here as much of East TN can reach 100+ inches of rain a year. Until TVA, flooding happened here every year, multiple times per year. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and field research with us. We have a lot of sinks in our creeks. The dry summers expose them. Quite scary to see a normal 30yd wide creek disappear into the Earth and pop-up mere feet or a mile downstream. Those stacked rock strata are just everywhere here.
As a geologist (UNCW '95 grad) this is fascinating. As an environmental chemist in my career, we have been busy testing drinking water from the affected WNC area as the systems come back online.Thanks for the updates and field verification.
Yes volunteers and locals alike have become I’ll. Also, horses and caliber dogs have died from the contaminated water. Everyone Shouid move imo as it’s toxic so they can’t take showers due to the skin being the largest organ in the body absorbing all the nuclear wastes that have been lied about that proof from the semi found buried and all the empty barrels, sewage, industrial and household chemicals plus the dead animals and bodies -unbelievably toxic! There Shouid be a water tower out in alreadyvwith that being fixed by the army corp of engineers etc versus them shoveling mud out of a fudge shoooe etc. Just doesn’t make any sense .
How’s the test?
WHAT DID YOU VOME WENT. ??
Has any of the soil and water been tested for contaminants?
Perma-pastures farm is doing some great remediation work, and getting independent testing done on contaminates
This video was so valuable to me. I saw the video of the couple standing on the porch talking and in 10 seconds debri & water wiped out their land. I could not imagine how that happened. I kept thinking, "Where did that river come from? How did a river come barreling out of the hills of trees when clearly their elevation was above flood level?" Finding this video explained everything. I am going to keep watching it to learn more.
This guys TH-cam channel is amazing. I’ve been watching him for about a year now. His videos were addictive even before all these horrible debris flows happened.
You realize that streams, ponds & other pockets of water exist at all elevations, so why would this be out of the realm of imagination when the ground gets too saturated to hold onto that much water & inevitably floods?...
@AkbarZeb-p6f I grew up in the mountains and never personally witnessed something that I was seeing for the first time at a high elevation. It was shocking to watch it happen, where the principal of "never build in a flood zone" does not apply. I am sure it was shocking mainly because no one has seen this, at least with in a 1,000 years.
.@@james-c6d6n
Never understood how roman towns were found under dirt until I was older & learned of mud slides
Wow!!! This is what I wanted to see…WHERE DID IT ALL START!!! Amazing and shocking. It gives such perspective to the damage. Thank you !!!!!
Now that it is over, where did it all go?
@@stevecummins7834exactly!
Retired electrician here, Excellent video you’ve got here. Well done. Your narrative is good, visual examples are good, I’m impressed.
Thanks,
Pete
Truly amazing.....I had a hard time visualizing millions of years of erosion on our planet. Especially when reading about ancient Glacial Lake Missoula emptying and the change of the landscape after. Thank you for sharing as it helps to understand geology and the power of water. I pray this never happens to the fine folks in that area again.
yes, it would be terrible to have two of these events or more within a generation in an area. we hope it won’t happen!
It is almost incomprehensible to imagine the width, depth, and speed of these flows to cause this effect and phenomenon.
Thank you for sharing this video and information.
Yes, GREAT introduction, and even "GREATER" that there was someone down in that creek bed area, for comparison...when I saw the human, and hearing your explanation of the mud flowing so fast it banked the corner THAT HIGH!!! That's crazy!,Sadly, that lends some explanation at to WHY their are STILL people missing! Sadly, some certainly will never be found...😥
And that's the saddest of all
16:04 that shale has been saturated and then there was hydraulic pressure from the huge amount of throughflow, this increases loading whilst reducing friction between the substrate/regolith. Thanks for bringing this to us all
It would be really cool to see you and Mark Huneycutt do a collab in North Carolina. Both of y’all have been educating people on the impacts of Helene but from different points of view. He’s been on the ground and you’ve been explaining how it happened. Truly grateful to both of you for the in-depth coverage of this disaster.
Yes and check out the part 3 documentary of Truthstream Media!
@TruthstreamMedia
The collaboration we need.
Agreed - Mark Huneycutt showed that first debris flow where it turned the corner and raised 16ft. He also had drone footage of the channel. Both of your videos are fascinating!!
@markhuneycutt Agree, Mark did a phenomenal job journaling this area!!!❤
Omg!!!! This man is beyond stunning!!! I want to put my face next to the arch of his foot!!!!
Years ago I watched a vid on the Frank Slide (Turtle Mountain) and the engineers showed how water turns things into super sliders. Its like greasing your brakes. That must have been centuries of debris and detritus on that forest floor. And I will say when your friend was wandering about I think the elevation might have been more than you think. I cannot imagine the roar it made when it slid.Just terrifying.
I live in central NC so Ive been following your videos. The sheer MASS of displaced soil and rock is hard to comprehend. Quite awe inspiring to witness such a force of nature and how it changes the earth. So sad, because it will take a lifetime for the valleys to heal, - and even then they won't be the same because the topsoil is gone
Then realise
it has happened THOUSANDS of times before
over MILLIONS of years.
Normal.
/
Impressive and scary!
Your colleague walking through some shots was very helpful to grasp the size.
Great documentation, thank you for sharing!
Been modeling and mapping extreme flooding events for a few years, and sometimes it all feels rather theoretical. It is formidable to see the effects and changes to the landscape of these events in real life. Thank you for sharing your insights and on the ground experience with us.
It so much depends on where you are. I live on Hawaii Island on 3000 year old (lava) bedrock and get 150-200 " of rain per year where I am. Nothing happens right here. Go a few miles and things flood, we get land slides and roads get cut off.
I'm curious what the rainfall depth and intensity was. Maybe this beat the record? "Smethport, PA on July 17, 1942. A post-event survey by the Weather Bureau provided a widely accepted maximum storm rainfall of 34.50 inches within a 12 hour period, of which an estimated 30.60 inches fell in just 6 hours." What he shows from Helene is what was described in the PA newspapers in July 1942. Mountain sides let loose etc. The rain was described as ropes from the clouds.
You're doing a great job teaching and documenting. Thank you for your hard work and for taking the time to post publicly here on youtube. I was 9 years old when Mt. St. Helens erupted in 1980. I can remember the dust on our cars all the way down in NE Arkansas. This footage reminds me of the footage from Mt. St. Helens of the devastation caused by the mudslides that resulted from that eruption. These mudslides may not be as big as those were, but still, to even be in the same conversation speaks to how devastating Hurricane Helene was. And the synchronicity does not escape me either. Helene. Helens. 44 years. Reality if far more strange than fiction.
The amount of knowledge that we gain from careful and nonbiased examination of events like Mt. St. Helens and Helene is staggering. It confirms the story that the Grand Canyon tells about the Biblical flood account.
@@marilynbridges8697 Glacial dam… that is where to water to cut the Grand Candy came from. This video shows exactly how that happened.
Thank you so much. Your view from the top of that 'spur' is unbelievable.
There would be no way to plan for such as this. I can even imagine the terror the people felt. Thank you for your videos.
It was pretty terrifying. I looked out the window in the middle of the night and it was almost pitch black, but for what looked like a waterfall. ( that’s the best way I know to describe it). At that point all I could do was sit with my dogs and wait for it to end, praying we didn’t get washed away.
I could listen to you talk all day brother. I look forward to your videos. Awesome job
thanks...I've been known to be long winded!
@@TheGeoModels A born teacher. And we all benefit.
Thank you for this presentation. Great microphone choice for the leaves. It was amazing how well you could be heard without interference.
Excellent exposition of how these landslides formed - I learned a lot from this video. What's most surprising to me is how close the first "blowout" shown appears to be to the ridgeline. Not really on the side of a steep slope or downstream of lots of water flow in normal weather, not a place that normally gets enough precipitation to set this in motion. And the super-elevation flows where tributaries come in! Wow. Thanks for the video!
yep, it’s nearly at the ridge crest. that type of slide occurs only in the rowdiest rain events. just about any Appalachian mega-rain event has a bunch of them associated with it.
WOW at 19:24
I never expected to see Bedrock in my lifetime. Makes sense, how you presented this information.
I thought bedrock would have been humongous rock and not in those layers you showed us. Some of what I saw in this video was striped...like the old trees that are..... lost the word... dehydrated & still present...petrified!!! Really astonishing. Thank you very much. Hopefully this will educate many of us AND keep people from looking for themselves!
Thanks for another excellent video. Something that continues to cross my mind with these debris flows is that they seem to behave a lot like a wet slab avalanche.
it’s comparable, in that a slide starts and then liquefies. the liquefied condition and carrier fluid makes it mobile.
I really appreciate your geologic explanations of origin of the devastation from Helene. I'm a bad student of geology (one class at Chapel Hill) but enjoy being in the field, hiking and doing amateur radio in the mountains. Your explanations are incredibly helpful, illuminating and highlighting the incredible force of nature upon our world. Thank you for taking the time to do these videos. Also, appreciate your low key, friendly style.
Appreciate this. It helps illustrate the materials, their consistency, their point of origin, and the inertia they can build. Sort of a time bomb just waiting for hundreds of years waiting on an extreme rainfall event. This was fascinating.
Yes, the research this will prompt will try to understand if you can examine a mountain slope and see if it is "loaded" with material and more apt to fail. We look for old slides as evidence for instability, but maybe you should look for places that don't have them because they are up next...
@@TheGeoModels That's a scary thought. Any of the old hollows have the same potential and sadly it's the hollows where people build. I heard one woman tell about being hit by a very short flow as she had her back to it. She was one of the fortunate ones. As someone else said here, some who didn't will likely not be found.
Thank you for your videos. I lived in the area for many years and never dreamed anything like this could happen. Your videos are definitely educational.
I have learned so much from Philip. I grew up at the foot of the Blue Ridge and had no idea what the Appalachians were capable of doing. He is a great communicater. Anyone who lives in such an area needs to be educated as to what could happen in the future.
Your videos are so helpful for me to understand what happened. They are just as valuable than the "this is gone, that is gone" ones. They put a perspective on the others. Thank you so much.
The power of nature is absolutely incredible! It can be such a destructive force and in this case it was. To see your colleague walking the debris field really gives it scale. WOW! It changed the topography of that mountain and has left an unusual beauty. I would love to see Mr. Prince come back to this site in 5 years to see how it's changed from now. Then do a comparison video. Thank you sir for taking us along. I was fascinated to say the least!
Coming from someone who took one geology class in college and ABSOLUTELY LOVES this area... THANK YOU!! Having only learned a small part of geology and having been to this area thousands of times it puts the magnitude of this storm into perspective. I'm completely heartbroken for the sweet people of this area. Praying for their endurance as this will take years to recover from. THANK YOU SO VERY MUCH FOR THE VIDEOS.
Same here 🙋♀️. I took a geology class ( in 1972 😂 ) for electives and retained just enough knowledge to understand most of the terminology he uses so really fascinating to watch his videos.
This is extraordinary debris flow. Thank you kindly, for this coverage and thorough explanation.
The similarities between an avalanche and these debris flows is amazing.That first slope basically got overloaded and slid on a weaker smooth surface.The historic avalanche in the Conundrum valley outside of Aspen in 2019 had the same exact characteristics.
Im not a geologist. I'm a retired Firefighter. But I found this video remarkably interesting. The power of Mother Nature when she get's pissed is shocking. My heart goes out to the people of NC. Especially the landowners who have lost thousands of acres. Who are now unable to access the other side. You have a new subscriber. Please post the next video!!
Trying to do one about dams next, I hope. Just where some of them area, etc.
It was good to see the other guy to help us understand the scale of it. Great work. Thanks from Australia 🌏
glad you found it interesting! that was Jennifer in the field with me. she and Stephen sort of kept landslide work alive in North Carolina after state funded work on it got shut down. they did a fine job with it. great to work with them
appalachianlandslide.com/about-us/
@@TheGeoModelsthanks. It saddens me that research work and study in this important field loses funding at the State level. Indeed at any level. I grieve for the growing loss of trust in scientific knowledge and it's important applications. 👍🌏
@@smith...1I hope evidence like this video and the overall results of the natural disaster can be used to help reinstate funding somehow.
Hard catchments, line small ponds high up, cabins have rain tanks, and diversion channel around the fountain terrace they are placed on. Landslides in Nepal are frightening. Sand bag with tarp when anticipation of long storm. To make temporary ponds.
Very glad I found your video! Thanks so much for putting this out there, Philip. Fantastic explanation of the events. I wanted to be a geologist, but instead went the petroleum engineer route for the job opportunities. Going out and surveying the landscape like you are doing (and knowing what your are looking for) has been my unfulfilled dream. The physics part of geology is what facinates me. I'm sure this was as fulfilling for you as it would be for me.
I’d like to see where this all ended? Where did it stop when it quit moving down the mountain. You are so wonderful to watch and learn from. Thank you! I’ve learned a lot from you…
ran down a flatter valley for about a mile. and cleaned out everything in its path.
Your videos should be used in classrooms..you have a way of explaining complex subjects for everyone to understand fully
Dude, I’ve spent my summers in the toe river valley for years. Your info in real time was incredibly valuable to me. It’s always good to know what’s happening around us and beneath our feet. The remnants of this will remind us for our lifetimes and many more. Thank you for sharing this with us and for putting the time into the videos 🤙🏻
Thank you. Just ... thank you. This video was more chilling than any horror film I've ever seen -- and it didn't need to show a single pile of splinters that used to be someone's home to evoke that emotion. Informative, and potentially important in trying to explain to non-scientists the peripheral effects of today's shifting climate.
Thank you also to your anonymous colleague for helping to indicate scale. I don't kow if this was planned and deliberate, but seeing her/him gave a far more sense of scale than descriptions of "thirty feet".
You did good work here.
Wow. That's amazing, especially how far up the mud line went.
savage!
It's not natural. Check out the number of small earthquakes that happened at the same time. It's amazing what a JDAM does
@@jonathanclark257what?
Yes I agree!
@@jonathanclark257 So we moved on from blaming cloud seeding, haarp, and lasers to suggesting there were aircraft dropping bombs in BFE WNC during a hurricane?
My brother in Christ, in this very video you can see the start of two of these debris flow events. Do they look like craters? “But there were earthquakes!” Wow, it’s almost like there were massive amounts of mud hurtling down the mountainside. Maybe, just maybe, those were the earthquakes? How does “wow, that was such an insane amount of debris it registered on seismographs” become “those earthquakes were bombs that triggered the flows”?
I get it makes you feel clever, to be the among the select few who know the “truth”, but the world just ain’t that complicated.
Thanx for helping me understand what happened up here in our WNC montains. Extremely helpful for me. God bless you✌️💕🙏 Western NC🇺🇸
Excellent job of panning camera instead of jumping around. Makes sticking with your video to the end a pleasure. The technical content is just as good and comprehendible. I will take this video lesson with me me to use my i phone in the future.
Your videos have been so helpful. This one helped me realize the enormity of the slides. Mind boggling. Thank you for taking the time to share this with us.
Wow, thank you for the field trip! It’s far more impressive, and mind blowing to see it on the ground! It’s incredible to imagine the amount of material being displaced, and the amount of energy that was generated in the process!
Thank you so much for sharing and helping us understand what happened. I appreciate you so much!
Its so devastating.
But, we who live here needed to know how this happened.
Thank you! Thank you!
Ive subscribed!!!
Please keep these coming!!!🏞
I used to live off of Bald Rock Road and wish I could see how that slope fared in this storm. There was a spring above our house, in a large apple orchard, and easy access to 5 gallons a minute of water for our local well. Someone had built two newer homes in what I now believe to be the drainage channel which might have flowed west toward the Eastern Continental Divide. Before we moved, we'd had a storm which gave us 12+ inches and destroyed a bit of Bald Ridge Road where a small bridge had spanned a lovely little creek. This was more than a decade ago--but it was enough to send us packing.
it had huge debris flows off the road embankment, like across from hog rock. no one hurt, but close.
Thank you for this! I believe a lot of us have been waiting for this insight! Stay safe!
Those plates look like shale. No wonder there was so much shifting with all of that land with all that water! This video is mind blowing! Thank you so much for all of your videos! I spent a lot of time growing up in the Western Carolina mountains. The power of water is crazy! Everything is totally reshaped! My heart hurts so bad. This is still all so unreal that it happened! All those poor trees. Thank you again so much for your videos!
You meant ALL those poor PEOPLE who lost their lives and All that have lost EVERYTHING that they had
as a visual learning, these videos you put out have answered a lot of questions and made those answer sticks a thousand times more than reading has ever done for me on geology. thank you.
Absolutely finominal, as a retired Science teacher having an eagle eye view of these slides and the geological make up of the mountains one sees on Google Earth blows my mind! During this video, a view across the mountain chain was breath taking.
A granite based mountain of the Rockies rests at my feet.
Keep up these fantastic scholarly videos.
Mesmerizing. Having the occasional 'person for scale' tied together all the elements of your analysis and the mind boggling scale this disaster.
This has certainly filled my goal of learning one new thing every day. Thank you for sharing you time, energy, and expertise.
Your opening scene is the same place Mark Huneycutt showed us a couple of weeks after the storm, I remember he also commented on how the flow was moving so fast it couldn't make the turn to the right and piled up on that far hill before tearing off down the stream channel. This is one of the most incredible things I have ever seen and trying to picture all that mud, water and debris at the time of the flow is beyond my comprehension.
Fascinating. Thank you for your expertise and time making these videos. The sheer scale of this is mind boggling.
Excellent presentation. Thank you. Really appreciate learning about these debris flows.
As a geologist, I cannot express how amazing it is to see geology "happening" in real time. After being so used to "short" time frames meaning half a million years, I appreciate learning how the geologic formations actually came to be. Thank you for your expertise and time!
Thank you!
I'm amazed at the damage! As a teen I witness the "Johnstown, Pa" flood...
Also my father was on the team to reconstruct and build, the safety systems for downtown Pittsburgh. For flood control in the early 1960's.
Warren Ohio
Absolutely breathtaking. Thank you for showing it.
Holy cow. It's one thing watching your narrated 3D MS Paint drawings, but it's a whole other thing seeing it in person. It kinda puts into perspective the aftermath of the anomalous flooding we received up here in Reading, PA in July 2023, and why they are still rebuilding more than a year later. I mean, it's nothing like on the scale of Helene, but it's eerily similar. I don't think our weathered bedrock is as platey as it is down there, but I haven't actually been up there to check. I think I might have to see if I can find similar scouring up in our hills. Super neat, thanks Dr. Prince!
Thank you for your detailed videos. Seeing the landscape, the mud flow paths, along with your explanation of the depth and velocity of the flow makes my heart hurt even more for everyone and everything in the path. The absolute devastation is horrific. Love and prayers to everyone affected.
I've watched a lot of the other videos you've about this, but the initiation is really what I couldn't grasp. This completely cleared that up for me, and now that I understand it the rest of it as it went down actually makes more sense as well. Thanks so much for these videos.
This is amazing footage. Thank you so much for going and doing this, I think the effects of this storm will be studied for years to come.
Thank you for showing this. It really demonstrates the absolute magnitude of the volume of material moved during the event.
You have done a great job explaining and showing what happened. Thank you for the education!
That was really amazing. The power of that water and debris is eye opening.
This is my home. Thank you for taking the time and using your expertise to help everyone understand what happened here.
Fascinating! Thank you for taking us up the mountain. Brilliant demonstration and explanation of the event. This really helps me understand the epic scale of damage.
I can only imagine what this must have looked like in real time. Very well done!
Just absolutely fantastic work putting the illustrations together and then taking the time to show us the actual debris flows. Just extremely enjoyable! Thank you!!!
More than a lifetime. The soil layer took thousands of years to build up.
Living out west in the cascade range
And knowing the location of this
My heart sank when that system dumped all that water. The channels are so tight down there man. Its amazing anyone survived it really. I appreciate the study on the origin points dude. Was curious as to how it gained all the debris.
Keep rockin it brother
Yikes! That is the most scary (the damage) and most beautiful (the exposed bedrock) occurrence to even comprehend and contemplate! Incredible video! 👏 👏 👏 I had to watch it twice! What a lesson to learn!
I can't imagine how long it would take for all those saplings to replenish the land. That's wild 😮
It is amazing to see exactly how and why the devastation was so immense below. I've seen pictures of some of the slides, but they give no perspective of height/width/depth. And it's difficult to understand where all the boulders and multi-feet of mud and rock came from that is seen in the wiped-out towns and communities! One video I saw was of a man in Bat Cave, NC who is ~6' tall, standing on what was the original roadway and behind him is almost 7' wall of mud. It was difficult to understand how and why that could have piled that high. So seeing this video puts that, and the extent of the damage seen in so many areas, into perspective. I really feel the insurance companies need to understand this was not a flood. Thank you very much for taking the time to explain all this to the layman.
The multi-day rain certainly saturated the upper layers of the forested soils (lots of clay?) to the bedrock below, in a way that when Helene rains arrived, that extra rain volume in a matter of an hour or two created enough weight that the friction between the bedrock and unconsolidated loose rock and soil was certainly viscous enough to become "slicker than a whistle." Maybe that expression originated in these hills! 😮
fascinating to see the destructive power of water. Thanks for taking us on that hike.
Great on-the-ground view of this set of debris flows. Those super-elevation areas are amazing. It would be helpful if you could provide the location where you filmed.
I found this video to be fascinating. Thank you for making it.
The sheer power of the debris is, honestly, horrifying.
It appears that the topography is completely different now.
Again, thank you for making this video.
Erosion is a slow process... Until it isn't
I was thinking the same thing. 1 single catastrophic event can cause the equivalent of thousands of years worth of natural erosion. I think about the Grand Canyon a lot and how one single catastrophic event may have been the creator of that feature, rather than millions of years of erosion like many would like us to believe.
In doing geological surveys, talking to people, and direct observation, erosion is slow punctuated by major events. All tiny compared to this one.
A good example and revaluation as to how small we humans really are in this universe😂 @marcellemay7721
The debris flow didn't create a canyon.
Boy, the mechanics of the soil really demonstrates the power and water that caused the soil to fail. Very nice work Philip.
This is very interesting, as someone who studied creeks and streams for gold prospecting. When the vegetation grows back the evidence will be covered and no one will be the wiser.
Makes you want to explore and pan for gold and Indian arrowheads may be uncovered now. Have fun, be safe, and I hope you find great stuff. If not, it'll be fun anyway. Goodluck.
Being much older than you I remember the flood of 77 and would love for you to look at the scouring from that flood. Your video is deja vu for me.
it made a bunch of debris flows up behind bent creek! mt Mitchell too. might do a video on the bent creek ones someday. they are interesting in LiDAR imagery.
The sheer amount of material and power is mind blowing. I've been working in the path of two of these in Fairview NC and it's hard to fathom.
craigtown?
3 feet deep x 100 feet wide x 4000 feet long (underestimated napkin math) with a density roughly 5x of water = 210,000 tons !
To put that in perspective, something equivalent to 21, 100 car fully loaded coal trains whizzing by at 60mph !!!
Two aircraft carriers being passed at double their flank speed... 😵💫
Every 747 on the planet simultaneously taxing by on takeoff...
edit: Somebody must have an infrasound recording of those slides?
Great content. Thanks for taking the time to put this together. A lot of people (myself included) are interested to see this type of detailed, informed, boots on the ground narrative about how these types of rainfall events look once the landscape calms slightly from the initial shock.
It is incredible to see what exactly what happened in the landscape! Drone footage would be even more revealing as to the scope of the damage caused, but it is apparent just how massive these debris flows were. Incredible work by the way. Very informative and educational. Thank you for putting this information together.