Founded in 1998, Hellbender Press was a bi-monthly free newspaper distributed throughout the Southern Appalachian and Upper Tennessee Valley bioregion. It ceased publication when most local advertising was captured by the internet and going quarterly didn’t help scrape up the cost of printing. Reincarnated 2020 as an online publication with a full-time editor thanks to a major startup grant, continuation of Hellbender Press now depends on contributions from its readership again.

KNOXVILLE — The great floods of 2024, spurred by an ocean warmed by climate change, wrought unspeakable damage on the Southern Appalachians. As a 25-year champion of the environment and culture of our bioregion, our flood coverage cut close to the local quick.

Hellbender Press covered this unprecedented human and natural disaster sway for sway and stride for stride with the big dogs of news media. 

We discovered our role as not only chronicler and collector of crucial environmental information but a nimble and sprightly hard news outlet.

These efforts do not come cheaply. Our well-received and deservedly deep coverage also ate deeply into our freelance budget. We help feed talented writers, but are reliant on grants and small-dollar donors like you! Donations to Hellbender Press are tax-deductible when given in the name of the Foundation for Global Sustainability, a 501(c)(3) Public Charity.

Our efforts matter more than ever, and we humbly ask for your help as we move toward our fourth year of the digital-only Hellbender Press. Help us protect our mountains with good journalism, and help us leave no story untold.

Please donate now.

The CSX rail line through the Nolichucky River Gorge near Erwin, Tennessee was one of many transportation and vital commerce links destroyed by epic river flooding spawned by Tropical Storm Helene Sept. 26-27, 2024.  Jonathan Mitchell for Hellbender Press

ORNL Climate Change Institute: Weirdly warm water that spawned and fed Hurricane Helene was 500 times more likely due to climate change

OAK RIDGE — Hellbender Press spoke with Oak Ridge National Laboratory Climate Change Science Institute Director Peter Thornton about whether Hurricane Helene and its subsequent and disastrous impact on the Southern Appalachians was made worse by climate change. Citing an increasing scientific ability to link climate change to specific weather events, he said in a very matter-of-fact manner that yes, Helene was fueled by the symptoms and consequences of global warming caused by human emissions of carbon and other pollutants.

Thornton cited a World Weather Attribution report as a main source for his data and commentary, and summarized its research on Helene for Hellbender Press. Here is the interview, edited for clarity and brevity:

“I am the director of the Climate Change ScienceInstitute at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. I am a corporate fellow researchstaff at the laboratory in the area of earth system modeling and coupled carbon-cycle climatefeedbacks at the global scale all the way down to local scales.” 

HP: The effects of Hurricane Helene were worsened by preceding rain events, correct?

“The event as it played out along the sort of the eastern flankof the Southern Appalachians was influenced strongly by precipitation that came beforethe storm even made landfall. There was what’s referred to as a stalled cold front, which was sitting over that SouthernAppalachian region and the front, kind of a linear element, stretched from Atlanta up along the flankof the Southern Appalachians.

“There were river stages that were already approaching record levels in some areasof that region before the storm arrived. There was probably moisture being pulled in from theouter bands of the storm into that stalled cold front, which was making that precipitation eventslightly bigger than it would have been otherwise. But it was an independentsynoptic-scale meteorological event.

(That could be linked to increased moisture, a hallmark of climate change, on the fringes of the tropical system, but there’s no data on that yet).

Peter Thornton, director of the Climate Change Science Institute at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, is shown here doing climate-research field work in 2015. ORNL