When Hurricane Helene blew in last week, hundreds of thousands of North Carolina residents tuned into Ethan Clark, a college student, for insight and guidance.
The 21-year-old who started and continues to run the page, North Carolina’s Weather Authority, had been following the storm closely. He gave his followers updates about the hurricane’s movement as it progressed.
In a video shared on Sept. 25, the night before Hurricane Helene landed, the North Carolina State University student issued a strong warning.
“It’s supposed to bring life-threatening flash flooding to western North Carolina… So I’m going to walk you through everything,” get explained at the beginning of the video which included graphics he put together of the storm.
“How can we ever express to you what your calm and accurate, no hype forecasts and explanations mean to us?” one user replied to the post, which received over a thousand likes and hundreds of comments. “Thank you.”
“Thank you, Ethan, for always going above and beyond!!” another replied.
Hurricane Helene swept up the Southeastern part of the country, starting in Florida on Sept. 26, according to NBC News. The devastation has been immense, with over 200 confirmed deaths and ongoing searches for the missing. Nearly a week after the hurricane made landfall, some 1 million customers were still without power
Clark, 21, has been providing detailed weather forecasting to members of his community since 2016. Back then, he was just 17, and he called the page Ethan’s Weather. The project has evolved to more than what he’d intended — a place for close friends and family to get information about potential natural disasters. Today, for the 400,000 and more people who go to his Facebook page for information, it’s become a lifeline.
When Clark advised his followers to take necessary, many did.
“One family told me that she got her parents to come to Raleigh, leave town, (or) they would not be alive today,” Clark recalls in an interview with TODAY.com. “She doesn’t think they would have survived because their house got destroyed.”
Clark isn’t paid for running the page, he says. He’s just trying to make sure everyone stays safe without panicking.
“When it concerns weather forecasting, I don’t want to scare anyone,” he adds. “If (I let) people know, I’m concerned, it’s because it’s going to bad. Certainly (I did) for this storm. And it appeared some people heeded my warning.”
Providing as much of a heads-up to his community and the others who were watching has fueled Clark to continue keeping an eye out for any potential clusters following Hurricane Helene.
“For nine straight years, I’ve posted something every single day on my daily forecast,” he explains. “I like helping people.”
“My grandpa lives in McDowell County, which has been hard hit,” he explains. While his own family was fortunate to survive without injury, many of his friends and neighbors weren’t as lucky. “No one died in my family, but lots of other families, my friends actually to go to Appalachian State have damaged their house.”
