Hurricane historian makes timely presentation at Frink
What was the costliest hurricane ever to hit North Carolina? Which hurricane caused the greatest flooding in Lenoir County? Which state is the No. 1 target for hurricanes? Will climate change cause future hurricanes to be bigger and badder?
To these questions and a lot more like them, Jay Barnes has the answers.
Days after Hurricane Ian slammed Florida and climbed up the East Coast and in the thick of the Atlantic hurricane season, Barnes shared his considerable knowledge with a group of EB Frink Middle School eighth graders. They gathered Friday in the school’s History Lab with social studies teacher Chadwick Stokes, who arranged Barnes’ hour-long presentation.
Barnes has achieved expert status on the history of hurricanes as the author of five books that overlay the meteorological record of the storms with personal stories of survival, rescue and recovery. His first and perhaps best-known book, “North Carolina’s Hurricane History,” is in its third edition, updated to include information on the 15 hurricanes that have impacted the state since the book was first published in 1995.
Jay Barnes, the author of five books on the history of hurricanes, speaks to eighth graders during a presentation in the History Lab at EB Frink Middle School on Friday.
“North Carolina is a big target for hurricanes,” Barnes told the students. “We have a large coastline and if you look at how the Eastern Seaboard is shaped, North Carolina kind of sticks out. It’s like sticking its chin out in the Atlantic ready to get those storms.”
The state ranks No. 4 in the country as a hurricane target zone, behind Florida, Texas and Louisiana.
Countless storms have raked the state, or at least the land that became the state. All of them left a mark, but some wrote their names into the record books. Even if they didn’t have names.
Two hurricanes that converged over western North Carolina in July 1916 – before a hurricane naming convention was put in place in 1953 – dumped an unprecedent amount of rain on the area and caused what is called the Great Asheville Flood, “the greatest flood in North Carolina history up to that time,” said Barnes, who’s the president and CEO of the North Carolina Aquarium Society.
Of the eight hurricanes to hit North Carolina in seven years during the 1950s, Hurricane Hazel was “the most devastating of all,” Barnes said. “What makes Hazel stand out as a benchmark storm is that Hazel is the only Category 4 hurricane to hit North Carolina since record-keeping began in the 1850s.”
After 24 years in which no hurricanes threatened North Carolina – from 1960 to 1984 – Hurricane Hugo in 1989 set off a trend of destruction that included hurricanes Floyd in 1999, Matthew in 2016 and Florence in 2018 – all remembered for massive rainfall and subsequent flooding.
“Floyd was a different type of storm because it was mostly inland flooding. It caused some of the highest waters ever seen in our state and for many people it was a surprise,” Barnes said.
“Hurricane Matthew and Hurricane Florence were similar kinds of storms,” he said. “They won’t be remembered for the winds or storm surge as much as they will be remembered for their rain. The rains that fell cause the problems.”
Florence holds the record for the state’s most costly hurricane at $24 billion.
Matthew literally set the high-water mark in Kinston after dumping 16.5 inches of rain on the county. The Neuse River crested at 28.6 feet, a record.
While he told the students each hurricane “has it owns unique pattern of impact,” Barnes does see past storms like Matthew and Florence as predictive of the future. “These super-flooding disasters, we expect we’re going to see more of them,” he said.
His fifth book, “Fifteen Hurricanes that Changed the Carolinas,” includes research with hurricane experts at the National Weather Service, NOAA and elsewhere about the impact of climate change and a warmer world on the frequency and strength of hurricanes. Whether they will be worse depends on what you mean by “worse.”
Fifty or eighty years in the future, Barnes said the experts believe, hurricanes aren’t expected to appear more frequently. They may bring stronger winds, but not by much. However, they will probably bring a lot more water.
“The real problem that forecasters and meteorologists are concerned about is that a warmer atmosphere allows clouds to hold more water,” Barnes said. “We think our hurricanes of the future are going to get wetter and wetter and wetter. When you have higher rainfall levels, that’s bad news for everyone.”
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