A volunteer is organizing supplies to distribute. After Hurricane Helene, Asheville, NC residents gathered supplies for those in need. A colleague of the Industry Proving Grounds initiative, who volunteered to help coordinate supplies and distribution sites like this one, took this photo. (Image credit: Allison Bashford, IPG UE Retail)
Hurricanes Helene and Milton
Hurricane Helene made landfall in the Big Bend area of the Florida Gulf Coast as a Category 4 storm late in the evening of September 26, 2024. Some of Helene's largest effects were felt across the southern Appalachian Mountains, where widespread, severe, and unprecedented flooding occurred, causing hundreds of fatalities and billions of dollars in property damage. Strong wind gusts damaged property and blew trees and power lines down from the Gulf Coast to the North Carolina mountains.1 Hundreds of thousands of residents had no access to power for over three weeks and no clean water for over 50 days.2 The storm caused radical land change, including washing out roads, severe flooding, and landslides.
Two weeks after Hurricane Helene, Hurricane Milton charged into Florida. Fueled by the warm water of the Gulf of Mexico, Milton rapidly reached Category 5 status. Milton was a Category 3 hurricane at landfall and unleashed tornadoes, storm surges, and flooding rain. The impacts to east central Florida included an outbreak of at least 19 confirmed tornadoes that downed trees and power lines. On the northern side of the storm, torrential rainfall produced 10 to 15 inches of rain, causing localized flooding and rivers and creeks to rise.3
Hurricane Impacts on the Retail Industry
Hurricanes Helene and Milton caused cascading challenges that affected millions of Americans and thousands of businesses. For retailers on the frontlines providing essential supplies to the public, the storms caused supply chain disruptions, damage to business storefronts and warehouses, temporary closures, and impacts on employees and the economic health of the region. Through the Industry Proving Grounds (IPG), NOAA is working to improve the data, products, and services it delivers to industries about extreme weather events to enhance business resilience and empower these businesses to provide important services to communities before, during, and after disasters.
On Tuesday, November 5, 2024, industry leaders met with the IPG and the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA) to discuss the retail industry’s experience with Hurricanes Helene and Milton. Discussion during this meeting focused on identifying how the industry applied existing NOAA data and products to inform its decision-making and discussing the gaps in information they experienced.
During the engagement, retail leaders generally agreed that they were aware of and had access to official weather forecasts for each hurricane but lacked a deeper understanding of the implications of that forecast. One major retailer in the region noted that while many in the area “knew western North Carolina would be most impacted, but [no one] really knew what that meant. The data warned western North Carolina, but even their teams did not know the extent of what that would be. People have seen major flooding in the mountains before, but not like this.” Because the magnitude of the risk was largely unknown, critical retailers faced challenges preparing their stores, mapping supply routes, and communicating with their communities.4
Additionally, many pharmacies in the region were forced to temporarily close, due to forces outside of their control - limiting residents’ access to necessary medication and resulting in increased hospital visits.5 Retailers highlighted that a tool to help identify what types of transportation and infrastructure are most likely to be impacted would help them better stage resources ahead of a storm. “[We needed] to move generators from Florida up to North Carolina, but with the two main expressways that collapsed, it was extremely difficult to navigate to those areas,”6 a meeting participant shared.
Despite the significant impacts across the region, the retail industry also played a central role in supporting and serving their communities in the recovery process. Jenny Dissen, an Asheville local who works with the NOAA and North Carolina State University’s Cooperative Institute for Satellite Earth System Studies (CISESS), shared her experience with Hurricane Helene, highlighting how retailers including Walmart, Walgreens, and Lowe’s opened just a few days after the storm, giving communities access to essential items such as food and water. These retailers’ quick actions supported the recovery process in Asheville, NC, and were central to family and community resilience across the region.7
IPG and Retail Engagement
Hurricanes Milton and Helene caused unpredictable catastrophic flooding and landslides- significantly impacting the retail industry and its ability to serve communities. While data and data access were not a challenge, retailers’ ability to provide supplies based on demand was disrupted due to transportation barriers and treacherous mountainous terrain. During the IPG’s debrief with retailers on November 5th, retailers shared specific lessons learned and their information needs to inform IPG product development.
Key Retail Data Needs
Industry partners identified these key needs:
- An improved and detailed understanding of the connections between weather (e.g., rainfall accumulation, wind) and consequent impacts (e.g., floods, landslides, wildfire risk, debris flow), and how these impacts could manifest.
- Exportable models and forecasts in GIS format.
- Weather forecasts cross-referenced against sub-regional flood zone data, so it is clear where the water will go and what chances of flooding are in a given area.
- Centralizing and integrating different data sources, such as the social media feed from NOAA offices and the National Hurricane Center’s forecasts, on the IPG retail site to create a “one-stop shop” for information.
- The ability to examine current events compared to the historic context using real extreme weather events to explore potential impacts.
- A way to overlay transportation updates with road maps in the areas affected by the event in near real-time, which would improve response times for supply chain routes.
Moving Forward Towards Business Resilience
This conversation between NOAA, RILA, and the retail industry will foster continued collaboration and inform the IPG’s work. To meet the retail industry’s central needs, NOAA will develop new products and centralize existing tools through the IPG website. This discussion will also help inform new products for winter storm preparedness and response, enabling NOAA to expand the ways it supports the retail industry and its ability to serve communities across the country.
1 Tropical Storm Helene: September 26-27, 2024
2 Hurricane Helene leaves thousands without clean water in its wake
3 Hurricane Milton Impacts to East Central Florida
4NCEI / RILA November Meeting
5 It’s managed chaos’: Western NC hospitals challenged but operational in Helene’s wake?
6NCEI RILA IPG November Meeting Notes
7NCEI RILA IPG November Meeting Notes