Last week, soil entomologist Camila Filgueiras was allowed 30 minutes to grab whatever she could in her lab at the University of North Carolina (UNC) Asheville so she could teach her classes remotely for the rest of the semester. She hadn’t been there since Hurricane Helene brought torrential rains and devastating flooding in late September.
It was immediately clear that days without power and running water had destroyed much of her life’s work. Nematodes she’d collected over a decade, samples of soil and chemicals—all were ruined after the freezers shut down. “I had three different experiments with different species of insects going on,” she says. “All of them are dead.”
By some estimates, Hurricane Helene delivered $250 billion in damages to the southeastern United States, concentrated in Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina. Hurricane Milton, which wreaked havoc on Florida less than 2 weeks later, caused an additional $50 billion. Combined, the storms killed at least 250 people.
In some areas, researchers had barely begun to assess the extent of flooding damage caused by Helene before Milton’s approach. And as the second storm neared Florida’s Gulf coast, it spawned more than a dozen deadly tornadoes, leading the National Weather Service to issue 126 warnings—a record for the state. The rapid-fire disasters inflicted lasting damage on science as well as communities.
Two twisters touched down on Archbold Biological Station in Venus, Florida, about 115 kilometers inland. One destroyed a residential cottage and ripped half the roof off another, while a separate twister peeled roof tiles from the station’s sturdy, historical main building before moving into the surrounding scrublands. “I’m quite sure the scrub withstood the tornado damage much better than the built campus,” says Hilary Swain, executive director of Archbold, where researchers have collected biological and environmental data for more than half a century.
Swain estimates weeks to months of recovery lie ahead. “I can tell you, lying there as director, hearing roofs blowing off and other things—you are exhausted at what you know will be the aftermath and the recovery,” she says. It’s “daunting.”
Along the coast in St. Petersburg, Florida, Eckerd College was spared the deadly storm surge that was predicted ahead of Milton, but high winds and once-in-a-millennium rains still rocked the area. The school reopened to faculty on Monday, after wastewater systems were working again after the storms. But the seawater pumps that fill the tanks in the school’s waterside marine science laboratory remain offline. Physiologist Philip Gravinese had worried about the stone crabs that sat unfed in a tank for more than a week, but luckily, they weathered both storms.
Gravinese still doesn’t know about the fate of thousands of dollars’ worth of crab traps in Tampa Bay, part of an ongoing monitoring program. Plans to study heat tolerance in king crabs using facilities at the Mote Marine Laboratory and Aquarium in Sarasota, Florida, where Milton made landfall, are also on hold indefinitely, he says.
In the hours before Milton struck, Mote scientists and staff raced to move animals, including two manatees, from their coastal facility to one about 20 kilometers inland. Despite their efforts, two river otters died during the storm. As of publication, Science was unable to speak to researchers at the facility. “Unfortunately, our staff is still fully engaged in ongoing hurricane relief and recovery efforts and are not able to interview at this time,” Mote’s communications coordinator wrote in an email. “It’s truly an all-hands-on-deck situation.”
Whereas many tended to captive animals ahead of the storms, others thought about wildlife. Ahead of Helene, volunteers headed out to check on the many eastern box turtles that roam the grounds of the North Carolina Arboretum, located just south of Asheville. The arboretum documents the reptiles as part of the 100 Year Box Turtle Project, an ambitious citizen-science project that aims to monitor the species across North Carolina.
One turtle, which volunteers have been tracking with radio telemetry, is known to be a bit of a homebody, typically only venturing from its preferred territory in Bent Creek to lay eggs in a nearby meadow. But Jonathan Marchal, who serves as director of education for the arboretum, says the turtle was spotted “going uphill with a purpose” a few days before the storm, “almost like it knew something was going to happen.”
Helene ended up clobbering the arboretum, knocking out electricity and water and felling about 2000 trees. In the aftermath, a police chief surveying an area of downed trees nearby had a close call with a black bear, which reared up on its hind legs and charged her. Bears aren’t uncommon in the area—they are frequently spotted strolling down streets and rooting through garbage bins—but officials with the North Carolina Resources Commission warned that uncollected trash, spoiled food, and unattended donation drop-offs were likely attracting more animals than usual.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission posted numerous warnings on social media urging residents to be on the lookout for wildlife. Alligators and snakes are more likely to be observed in areas affected by flooding, they cautioned. Officials also asked people to notify them of animals that might have been injured or stranded by the storms, such as manatees and sea turtles, by calling their Wildlife Alert Hotline.
Marchal and his colleagues are working tirelessly to repair damage to the arboretum, hoping to reopen the facility—which currently remains closed until further notice—in time for their annual Winter Lights event. The show is the arboretum’s largest fundraising event of the year, with ticket sales directly supporting their conservation and community science programs. “We’re hoping to welcome a lot of people … and hope to be a bright light,” Marchal says, “but at the same time, we don’t want to gloss over what just happened to our community.”
Facilities that received the brunt of Helene and Milton are still assessing the situation. Last week, state officials and lawmakers toured Mote and estimated the storms caused as much as $13 million in damage. “Helene hit our feet and then Milton took our head off,” said Florida State Representative Fiona McFarland (R) in a press conference that followed. All Mote facilities remain closed with no timeline for reopening.
In Asheville, Helene severely affected operations at the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), which archives atmospheric, coastal, geophysical, and oceanic data gathered by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The center’s staff and its data records are safe, the agency reports. But NCEI’s incoming data streams, which draw from satellites, weather radars, and a variety of other sources, were disrupted, and some observations may be unrecoverable. As a result, the September U.S. and global climate reports, which were originally supposed to be released earlier this month, have been delayed.
UNC Ashville’s Filgueiras estimates it will take years for her community to recover—and that’s assuming another disaster doesn’t strike. “Unfortunately, [these storms are] something that we need to be expecting and be better prepared for,” says the biologist, who plans to change the focus of several long-term field projects to look at the impacts of record-breaking flooding and how long it takes ecosystems to return to baseline.
Even in storm-hardy Florida, things won’t be back to normal anytime soon. “The rest of the world moves on and thinks you should be moving at that pace,” Swain laments. “You keep on having to write and say, ‘By the way, I am trying to recover from a hurricane.’ And they say, ‘Oh, yeah, forgot about that.’”
