Atlanta — When Hurricane Helene struck the Southeast about two weeks ago, devastating parts of North Carolina, it also triggered hundreds of landslides according to federal geologists who have been flying over the Appalachians to find all the places where swaths of the Earth moved under heavy rainfall.
Dr. Ben Mirus and Dr. Francis Rengers with the U.S. Geological Survey have been using laser scans and GPS cameras, accurate down to one inch, to map out landslides caused by Helene. They hope mapping out Helene's destruction will help predict future disasters.
"This seems historic," Rengers said. "It's unclear that there's ever been a storm this widespread that caused this much damage in this area."
So far, they have mapped more than 600 landslides caused by Helene.
"Once we get up into the air and once we get satellite imagery, we expect to find hundreds, if not thousands of landslides," Mirus said. "…If this event is consistent with previous events where this much rain fell, then yes, we expect there might be thousands of landslides."
Meanwhile, at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center outside Washington, D.C., Dr. Dalia Kirschbaum is looking down from space.
"What we're seeing is that rainfall events are getting more extreme," said Kirschbaum, who is the director of the Earth Sciences Division.
NASA has more than two dozen satellites and instruments orbiting Earth, Kirschbaum explains. On a large map mounted on a wall in Goddard, those satellites show where rain is falling in real-time, as well as where landslides have happened around the world.
"What we try to do at NASA is understand the different conditions around which landslides may happen," Kirschbaum said.
Data collected from NASA, the USGS and other scientists, with the help of artificial intelligence, could soon help predict landslides. And those better predictions and preparations could help save lives.
The death toll from Helene, which made landfall Sept. 26 in Florida, had risen to at least 241 as of Saturday, according to numbers compiled by CBS News, including at least 122 deaths in North Carolina.
"My hope is that a community can take this model and effectively apply it and use it running in their community to better understand, and even anticipate, where we have the highest hazard for landslides," Kirschbaum said.
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