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As the storm from Hurricane Helene swept into North Carolina, David Easterling went into his backyard, just outside of Asheville, to check the rain gauge.
“To walk out and see it almost full was incredible,” he says. “It just rained and rained and rained. It was mind-boggling to see that much rain.”
Easterling is quite possibly the least likely person to be surprised by this. He’s spent more than 30 years studying extreme rain, as a climate scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Asheville is home to a number of climate researchers who work at the agency’s National Centers for Environmental Information, the central repository for weather and climate data.