Carolyn and Clifford Coffee’s home is less than 10 miles from Boone, a North Carolina mountain town popular with tourists and home to a college campus, set between a creek and steep hillsides.
The challenges wrought by Hurricane Helene in more remote mountain communities are also bringing renewed attention to longer-term mitigation efforts in such areas at a time when climate change is expected to fuel more frequent extreme weather, said Antonia Sebastian, an assistant professor at UNC-Chapel Hill who studies climate and flood risks.