By Catherine Komp, Engagement Director
When Meteorologist Brad Panovich thinks about the days following Helene, the first thing that comes to mind is everyone helping, no matter what their circumstances.
“I remember going into western Avery County, into the Roaring Creek area, which was heavily impacted. An elderly woman was coming out of her home—she didn’t have power or anything. I asked if I could help, and she said, ‘Do you want to eat lunch?’ I told her I was fine, but that was the attitude of everyone I met,” said Panovich. “They wanted to help me, even though I was there to help them.”
Panovich and North Carolina’s other meteorologists play a critical and unique role in our news and information ecosystem, and their job is not easy. They review constantly changing and complex data and turn it into actionable information everyone can use, from whether to take a rain coat or allergy pill as you leave the house to helping individuals, businesses and local governments prepare for extreme weather, like the wildfires currently forcing evacuations in western North Carolina. They’re also regularly review past data, like the newly released final NOAA report on Helene, to try to get better at what they do. And that doesn’t just mean improving accuracy of forecasts, but also how to better communicate risks to the public.
Panovich wants to see a shift in pre-storm coverage and messaging, to help more people survive inland flooding from tropical storms and hurricanes—which is now deadlier than those from storm surge at the coasts.
“Right now, there’s always someone standing on a beach with palm trees in the background so we give the impression this is a coastal event,” said Panovich. “I hope in the future we’ll send people, before the event, to the French Broad River or the Lumber River and report there and say ‘This is an area that floods when we get tropical storms and hurricanes’ so people take it seriously.”
This week, we chat with Brad about lessons learned from Helene, the role of local news in wildfire preparedness and the impact of federal cuts to the National Weather Service and NOAA, including the loss of both experienced and probationary staff and cuts to this weather balloon program, an essential source of data for local meteorologists.
“The longer these cut backs go on, the longer there’s short staffing and big weather events, the more stressed these [NSW] employees become, I think eventually it will degrade our warning and watch process and eventually maybe even forecasting.”
NC Local: We’re approaching this milestone—the six-month anniversary of Helene. What have you been reflecting on?
Brad Panovich: Well, in some ways, it feels like it was just yesterday, and other times it feels like it was a year ago. Every time I go up there or take part in a new event, you see parts of the mountains that look like nothing has happened since the storm. It’s really frightening in some cases.
And really it’s a triage-type thing—you understand why some things haven’t been touched because they’ve had to start with a pecking order. First, they had to get the roads open, then rebuild infrastructure, and only then could they start cleaning up creeks, streams, and riverbeds, which are still full of debris and downed trees.
I was thinking about Lake Lure—they’re just now removing the sediment that washed in. The first priority was clearing surface debris. It’s just such a long process. That’s what strikes me the most—this isn’t going to happen overnight. My fear is that people will forget and not realize how much help is still needed, especially for the local businesses.
As you know, it’s such a tourism-based economy in the mountains and they lost the best part of the year—the fall leaf season. That was wiped out. The ski season was pretty good, but there were still a lot of challenges. Now, we’re ramping up for summer, the second biggest tourism season. People go to the mountains to escape the heat of the low country. You hope these places can reopen, but a lot of them probably won’t be able to this summer.
I don’t know how many seasons we can get through before some of these businesses can’t maintain themselves anymore. That’s my biggest concern—making sure people and businesses can survive. These small towns rely on people from the low country coming up and spending money. You just hope people will come, help rebuild, and support these businesses so they can stay open.
You came out here the week after Helene hit. What was that like for you, being some of the first people from the outside to come in?
That first weekend, what struck me most was the lack of communication. In 2024–2025, you don’t realize how much you rely on technology for information until it’s gone. There was no communication—it was like old-school word-of-mouth.
You saw pictures and signs everywhere—”Hey, we’re okay, we’re in this location.” It felt like going back to the 19th century, with people traveling from the higher country and hollers into the towns to share information. In Charlotte, I’d say, “Alright, I’m going to the mountains. You won’t hear from me for eight hours. I’ll bring back updates.” But in that eight-hour window, you had no idea what was happening.
The other thing that struck me that weekend was how amazing and resilient the people were. It was incredible to see churches and neighbors helping each other. Watching from afar, you wonder, “How bad is it?” Well, it looked pretty bad, but I was amazed how people were just helping each other out and it really is a true testament to how great the mountains are.
I remember going into western Avery County, into the Roaring Creek area, which was heavily impacted. An elderly woman was coming out of her home—she didn’t have power or anything. I asked if I could help, and she said, “Do you want to eat lunch?” I told her I was fine, but that was the attitude of everyone I met. They wanted to help me, even though I was there to help them.
And that really struck me that first weekend: even though there was this utter devastation, everybody was looking for ways to help you, and you almost had to say, hey, we’re here to help you, we need you to take this water or these supplies. They were just so worried about everybody but themselves.
What did you learn from Helene about how you communicate with the public and their information needs?
That was probably the first thing I started thinking about professionally. We knew this was coming—probably four days out. I knew it was going to be pretty bad because we had this predecessor rain event, meaning rain fell two or three days before Helene even arrived. That’s when I started getting really worried, thinking, “This is not going to be good.” We were essentially going to triple the rain we had just gotten over two days, but in only eight hours.
You knew it was bad, and you’re using terms like catastrophic flooding, trying to relate it to the flood of 1916. The problem, from a communication standpoint, is that not many people were alive during those floods, or they have little memory of them. They just see the historical markers—they don’t have a concept of how much water was actually coming.
So, you second-guess yourself; was there a better way I could have communicated this? In hindsight, it’s hard to tell people in the mountains, “You’re going to get flooded even if you’re not near a creek, river, or stream.” If I had said that four days out and told everyone to leave, people would have said, “What are you talking about? We’ve been here 100 years, and this has never happened.” You hear that a lot—“I’ve been here my whole life and never seen anything like this.”
From a communication standpoint, that’s the challenge. People’s level of preparedness is only as good as their memory of the last disaster. If they have no memory of an event like this, they have no reason to be concerned. They’ve been through bigger storms, or at least they think they have. That was the difficult part: trying to figure out what could have we communicated differently.
The good news is, I heard from a lot of people who said they actually heeded our warnings and did leave or went higher up because they knew it was bad. That gave me some reassurance. I had people reach out and say, “We left because you said it was going to be bad, and we didn’t want to be here.” Not that I was encouraging evacuation because I don’t know where I would have told them to go—you don’t evacuate the mountains. But it was good to see people taking it seriously.
Still, I don’t know if there was anything else we could have done, just because of how historic this event was. But I will say this—it will be much easier to communicate future storms. I don’t think anyone is going to take any storm for granted for the foreseeable future.
NC Local: Did your audience grow a lot over the last six months?
Brad Panovich: Yeah, especially online. It was pretty amazing. I work in Charlotte, and we cover three mountain counties—Avery, Ashe, and Watauga—but our signal reaches well into Polk and McDowell counties. People can watch us there on TV, but on the Internet, there’s no viewing limitations so our reach really grew from coast to coast. People were following us because we were posting constant updates, and there was a big information void. Any time I could get information out, I felt like I was helping people understand what was going on.
The cool thing was, when people outside the region heard what was going on, we saw an influx of supplies, volunteers, and help. For a long time, after the weather event itself had passed, my main role was to keep the information flowing so people knew what was needed. (Editor’s note: Brad also coordinated a massive donation effort and drove supplies to WNC.)
At first, we needed water—then we had too much water. Then we needed diapers—then we had too many diapers. Then we needed Benadryl because everyone was getting stung. Every day, the needs changed. That became my job—getting the word out, because you couldn’t source a lot of these things locally. The supplies were gone.
It was amazing to see help coming in from outside the area, and that’s where the audience grew—people following just to see what they could do to help.
You mentioned the communications blackout. Have you thought about that more and what can we do if this happens again? Especially since, even after Helene was gone, the rivers kept rising and the risks continued for the next 24 hours.
Yeah, and that was really difficult. From a meteorological and hydrological standpoint, we lost the ability to get information about flood warnings after the storm had passed. Many of the river gauges were destroyed or damaged, so we didn’t even know how high some of the water levels were. That infrastructure has to be rebuilt.
Another thing that’s going to be interesting is all these creek, stream and riverbeds have changed forever. They’re not going to flow the same way in future storms. We don’t really know how they’re going to react to the same level of water because there’s sediment built up or the course of the stream moved. That’s something I would tell my audience, especially in the mountains, you’ve got to take every rain event pretty seriously going forward because we just don’t know how these systems are going to behave with heavy rainfall because of what Helene has done geologically to some of these river beds.
Going forward, we’re going to have to communicate way ahead of time and be very proactive, days in advance. There might be some false alarms, but that’s part of the deal with long-range forecasts. The key is getting ahead of the situation so we’re not waiting until the day of, when communication is lost, and people are left without critical information.
The final NOAA report just came out. It is very technical, so can you help us understand the findings and what stood out to you?
It’s interesting because I think this is the first time people have seen one of these final reports. But NOAA actually does this for every major system that hits the U.S., including large tornado outbreaks and floods.
One thing people might not realize is that meteorology is very retrospective—we always go back and study past events because that’s the only way we get better. I always say, the way you become a good meteorologist is by making mistakes—but more importantly, by learning from them. So these final reports are incredibly valuable to us as meteorologists because we can see what the outcome was and what we should have been paying attention to ahead of time.
One thing that struck me from the report was we don’t have a good gauge of the highest wind gusts and rainfall totals because a lot of instrumentation was damaged. The report lists the highest rainfall total at almost 31 inches, but I know for a fact that in Jonas Ridge, we had a weather spotter, who was off the grid living before the storm hit and was able to maintain communication via Starlink. He recorded close to 40 inches of rain and 80 to 90 mph winds so I’m sure there were segments in and around these areas that didn’t get recorded that ended up with higher amounts and higher wind speeds.
People also want to see how the forecast performed and technically, it performed pretty well—but communication wise it didn’t go very well. And what I mean by that is you also get worried as a meteorologist if technically the forecast verifies, but people still pass away or didn’t get the warnings.
From a social science standpoint, I’m curious how we can do better going forward. It’s great to have an accurate forecast but it doesn’t really matter if people don’t act upon that forecast. So those are some of the big lessons we’re going to learn, not only meteorologically but socially: how to do a better job at communicating.
One of the biggest things and this has been going on for about two decades: inland tropical storms and hurricanes. It’s hard to convince people living hundreds of miles inland to take a hurricane seriously. But I think Helene was a wake-up call for a lot of folks that hurricanes aren’t just a coastal event. They are an inland event and you’ve got to take them seriously.
Didn’t you post something a while ago about how deaths from storm surge have gone down, but fatalities from people driving into floodwaters have increased?
Yes. One of the biggest killers in all tropical systems or hurricanes is flooding. And in some of the biggest hurricanes we’ve had in the Carolinas—like Florence and Matthew—more people died after the storm driving into floodwaters than from the storm itself. Freshwater flooding has become the number one killer in tropical storms all around.
We do a really great job getting people to evacuate the coast ahead of storm surge. But unfortunately inland people don’t evacuate. So flash flooding from rainfall—just like what we saw in the mountains, that’s becoming the number one killer because there’s really no evacuation orders.
From a media standpoint, one of the things I’d like to see us do differently is where local and national news goes before a hurricane. Right now, there’s always someone standing on a beach with palm trees in the background so we give the impression this is a coastal event.
I hope in the future we’ll send people, before the event, to the French Broad River or the Lumber River and report there and say “This is an area that floods when we get tropical storms and hurricanes” so people take it seriously.”
Because whether we subconsciously know it or not, we’re telling people “Hey, we’re at the coast, there’s nothing you have to worry about if you live in the mountains.” That’s something we need to think about going forward.
There’s that “Turn Around, Don’t Drown” campaign. But are there other things that you think news and information organizations can do to help drive home that message?
I feel like we’ve said that term forever. It just does not work for some reason. And the thing is, there’s actually been some research into this. A lot of times, when we see people driving into water, we cringe and think, “What are you doing? Why are you doing that?” But when you follow up, you often find that these people had family on the other side of that river or creek, or they had a job they needed to get to. So there were these mitigating factors where they were putting themselves at risk because something was forcing them to take that risk.
I think from an educational standpoint, we could do more to acknowledge these realities. Not everybody can just stay home. Some people have to go to work, and that’s where employers need to step up—so employees don’t feel pressured to risk their lives driving through floodwaters just to keep their jobs.
That’s something we need to take into account when we talk about the “Turn Around, Don’t Drown” campaign. Not everyone is in the same boat, so to speak. Some people have to get to a location, and we don’t always know what’s on the other side for them.
Let’s turn to wildfires. Are the wildfires we’re seeing now typical for this time of year?
We actually have two fire seasons in the Carolinas—one in the spring, which we’re in right now, and one in the fall. The reason these are the two main seasons is that we have dead or dormant vegetation. Think about the fall—leaves fall off the trees, and you’ve got dry, dead leaves. Vegetation stops growing, and that makes conditions drier. These are also the two times of year when we have the most wind. So there’s this dangerous combination of fuel—dried vegetation—and high winds.
Now, couple that with a drought, the problem gets even worse. On top of that Helene took down around $300 million worth of timber in western North Carolina. This isn’t just twigs and branches; these are full-on dead trees that are now fuel. So this has been a particularly bad fire season just because of that combination—the Helene damage, the drought, and it’s been a pretty windy spring as well.
Another thing is most of these fires are caused by humans—not arson, usually accidental. In the mountains and foothills, there’s been a lot of debris burning to get rid of debris from Helene. If you’re a big property owner, the easiest way to clear fallen trees and branches is to burn them. And in the spring, there’s typically a lot of burning for that reason. Unfortunately, that just creates more opportunities for fires to start.
Then, there’s the issue of repairs after Helene. People are driving into the backcountry with vehicles that don’t have spark arrestors on their mufflers, or they’re dragging chains. There are all these weird ways fires start—it’s not always from a campfire (though that can happen). A car driving on a road can be a source of fire, or a hot muffler in tall grass, or a spark coming from chains. Power lines coming down in high winds are another cause. And obviously, people sometimes burning debris and not paying attention.
So while this does feel like an especially active fire season, this is our spring fire season so we typically see some. We’ve just seen a lot of big ones lately. And they’re hard to fight because of the Helene damage. Firefighters can’t access them because there are no roads, or roads are blocked by fallen trees. That makes it really difficult.
What’s your role as a meteorologist with these fires? Clearly, there’s an intersection with mapping, wind, and drought. But is this a primary function for you right now—keeping an eye on wildfires and getting the word out?
The biggest thing is communicating the burn bans. That’s been really important. Burn bans are interesting because they come out from the state forestry service or the fire marshal, and they only apply to fires more than 100 feet from a structure. So in urban and suburban areas, a lot of people have fire pits, and those are typically allowed, even under a burn ban, because they’re within 100 feet of a home. But lately, county fire marshals have been saying, no, all fires are banned. Except for grills and smokers. So getting that information out is critical because people don’t always realize a burn ban is in place.
From a meteorology standpoint, it’s actually easy for us to spot fires because they show up so clearly on radar and satellite imagery. On sunny and windy days, I can pull up a satellite image and see exactly where each fire is and how it’s spreading. And then, of course, you get a lot of people asking, Where’s that smoke coming from? They smell smoke and worry that it’s nearby, but they don’t always realize how far smoke can travel. People will think a fire is close to their house, but in reality, it could be four counties away. That’s how far smoke can travel. Sometimes, the smoke itself is our best communication tool because it tells people, “Hey, there are fires burning, and you need to take this seriously.”
Do you include the fire ban in your daily forecast?
Yes. Lately, we’ve been doing a fire checklist—looking at conditions like wind, humidity, and dry fuels and try to update. And we always include burn bans so people know what’s going on there. Some property owners do want to do prescribed or controlled burns on their own property. But we want them to wait for better conditions because those prescribed burns can be useful, if they’re done correctly.
Beyond the updates and burn bans, how do you think news and information organizations should be educating their communities about wildfire preparedness?
I think people need to be ready. Especially for folks that live in that urban-wildlife interface, especially in the mountains. You’ve just got to be prepared for these fast-moving fires. The other thing we have found is that the building materials you use on your home and then your landscaping—can be a big part of the risk. For some reason, we use pine needles everywhere around here. It’s like the worst material to put around your house. But maybe you pick something that’s non-flammable. Those mitigating factors can help. And just trimming brush and trees away from your house—that can make a big difference.
IBHS, one of the big wildfire research centers down in Chester, SC, find that most fires start because people have debris in their gutters. Embers land on the roof, fall into the gutter, and ignite the leaves and debris, then the soffit and the roof catch fire. Anyway embers can ignite on your home, that’s a way a fire can start. There are some simple things people can do around their home to help prevent their home from burning
But also making sure you know where you need to go if there’s a fire. Because these evacuations—they’ve been happening in the middle of the night. We’ve seen a lot of that lately. And you don’t want to get that phone call or that knock on the door and not know what to do. So that’s something we can do, especially in the media—help people prepare for these situations and not just have their severe weather kit but also their fire safety kit ready to go so they can leave right away.
We are seeing federal cuts to NOAA staff and programs, and I’m wondering—how is that going to affect the job that you do?
There’s a lot of unknowns, I’ll tell you that. Going into the year, the National Weather Service had 600 openings, so we were already short-staffed. A lot of that was due to retirements. There’s been a big rollover in the age demographics of the agency. A lot of experienced meteorologists retired, and younger meteorologists were coming up to replace them.
Then there was this “fork in the road” retirement plan, which allowed a lot of folks to take early retirement which drove a lot of the older meteorologists out because they were close to retirement. And then we had probationary firings, which, unfortunately, hit the young, up-and-coming meteorologists. So we lost a bunch of great people on both ends—the experienced ones who retired and the young up and coming ones who were fired.
That has put a huge strain on the whole agency. I don’t think people realize—the National Weather Service runs 24/7. They do shift work. They’re in those offices 24 hours a day, seven days a week and they’re all over the country. So when you start eliminating staff, that overworks the staff that remains, which then burns them out. And the worst-case scenario is burned-out meteorologists who then have to work a severe weather situation, which is long days and long hours.
So I’m really worried about the turnover and burnout of those employees because even though I do my own forecasting, I rely heavily on the Weather Service to collect the data I use. When I don’t have that data, I can’t do my job. Your weather app can’t forecast the weather either because it pulls data from the Weather Service. Airlines, they can’t fly without that data. Almost every part of our economy has some basis on getting information from the National Weather Service or NOAA. So if there are cuts, or if they pull back services, it does have a trickle down effect that just gets worse over time. The longer these cut backs go on, the longer there’s short staffing and big weather efforts, the more stressed these employees become, I think eventually it will degrade our warning and watch process and eventually maybe even forecasting. Especially if we lose more weather balloon soundings
We lost about seven weather balloons recently due to staffing reductions. Those are so important to our weather models to forecast the weather. We actually saw a 20% drop in forecast accuracy during COVID because there was less airline travel collecting data. We got that back when travel returned, but now we’re losing weather balloons, which provide similar data. If we keep losing that data, we might see a reduction as well in forecast accuracy.
OK, quick side bar here: there are machines on commercial flights that collect weather data?
Yeah! A lot of people don’t realize that every commercial aircraft collects weather data. If you’ve ever been on a plane and pulled up the seat-back display to see the outside temperature and wind speed—that data actually goes into our weather models.
You get take off and landing, the temperature up there and the wind speed, so you get a really good sample of the jet stream. You get a profile of the atmosphere from that flight. The weather balloons do something similar but from a stationary location, going straight up and giving us data all the way to the top of the atmosphere. They help supplement everything, because they’re stationary locations. Airlines don’t fly everywhere, so that’s where weather balloons and satellite data fill the holes.
So multiple weather balloon programs were cut?
I think one in Alaska and six in the lower 48 were either reduced to one launch per day, which we normally do two, or eliminated altogether. Normally, the weather balloons are launched in the morning and evening, we call it 0Z and 12Z, which is Zulu time, that would be 8 am and 8 pm. All around the world, at the same time. It’s not just the United States. We’re very collaborative. Every weather balloon goes up at the same time. That data goes into the weather modeling that helps us forecast the weather.
People might think, what’s the big deal? Well, if a storm is coming from our west and there’s no weather balloon data, we’re not sampling that storm all the way to the top of the atmosphere. I wouldn’t know the temperatures or wind speeds are at 10,000 or 15,000 feet like I normally would. Those “soundings” are really important. In fact, the main reason we fly hurricane hunters into storms is because there are no weather balloons over the ocean. The data gets more accurate, the more we fly into the storms and sample it.
So that sampling of the atmosphere is really important. That’s something AI and technology hasn’t really replaced yet. AI modeling is great, but you still need to sample the atmosphere to feed the model. We always say: Garbage in, garbage out. If we’re not putting good data into our models, it doesn’t matter how advanced they are—they won’t work. So we still need people to launch balloons and fly airplanes into hurricanes
Is there some sort of meteorologists’ association advocating to get these cuts restored?
The American Meteorological Society (which I’m a member of) and the National Weather Association have been advocating a lot because they know how much the entire weather enterprise relies on this data.
Honestly, I don’t think we spend enough money because it’s so important. It’s a service that actually makes money. I think the trade association estimated that for every tax dollar spent, it returns $74 to the taxpayer. So your bang for your buck is pretty good for what we do.
And this is very bipartisan. The National Weather Service might be the most favorable federal agency there is. So that’s why it’s been shocking there have been cuts because some of the most diehard supporters of this come from both blue states and red states. It doesn’t matter because everybody understands how important this is to their local economies.
The National Weather Service and NOAA are in the Department of Commerce. I would tell you that’s a sign of how important weather is to commerce. But a lot of times when politicians make budget cuts, they just see “Commerce” and don’t realize the departments and agencies that are under there. Maybe shifting the Weather Service and NOAA to Homeland Security that sounds bigger or more important could help prevent future cuts.
Thank you so much, Brad. Is there anything I haven’t asked that you want to share?
No, I’m just glad you’re still talking about Helene. I think this will be an important summer to see how far we get. My next big fear now is how anxiety will affect people during the upcoming hurricane season. Every storm that even remotely looks like it’s heading for the Carolinas is going to be a battle of “We want everyone to take this seriously, but no it’s not another Helene.” Because all storms are different. There will never be another Helene. There will be storms that could be worse or storms not as worse, but there will never be one exactly like Helene. That’s the biggest thing I’m going to try to communicate is we want you to take all storms seriously but there’s not going to be another Helene, that name is going to be retired, but we want you to be prepared regardless.
