How Ethan Clark Worked to Get Hurricane Helene On Everyone’s Radar

Four weeks ago, Ethan Clark gathered his weather models, leaned over his computer, and attempted to define catastrophe.

From hours of analyzing forecasts, Clark, 21, knew that extreme flooding in western North Carolina was inevitable. At the same time, the National Weather Service was releasing alert after alert about the danger of Hurricane Helene touching down in an area already drenched from rain. Most people, though, don’t know what ‘14 to 20 inches of rain’ or ‘historic flooding’ could look like. 

It was Clark’s job to tell them.

Clark, a fourth-year student at North Carolina State University studying meteorology, runs a weather forecasting page called North Carolina’s Weather Authority. He says he enjoys doing regular student life things, like attending football games and hanging out with friends—but in his eight years of doing daily weather reports, he hasn’t missed a single day.

The Facebook page for North Carolina’s Weather Authority has reached over 591,000 followers in recent weeks, but many people have followed him since he founded the account, eight years ago, at the age of 12. 

One follower, Annie Ingram, moved to the North Carolina coast in 2019, where she has watched hurricanes become more frequent and intense due to climate change. After losing part of her roof in Hurricane Isaias, she says that finding a reliable weather source became a necessity.

“I was like, ‘Okay, I better buckle down and find something that I can trust,’ just because that was terrifying,” Ingram said. “After Isaias, I found out about Ethan’s account and started following him, and anytime we have severe weather, he’s always on it with his daily forecast.”

With Helene on the way, Clark began posting about the risk of heavy rainfall and flash flooding on Tuesday, Sept. 24, writing in his caption, “Western NC, I am worried about this much rain. Hopefully, the forecast busts!” From there, though, his concern only compounded.

“On Wednesday evening, I sounded the alarm, and was like, ‘It’s going to be bad,’” Clark tells the INDY. “I kept saying I was concerned because my followers know that if I’m concerned, shit’s really going to hit the fan.” 

Clark expected a predecessor rain event (PRE)—heavy-impact rainfall before a tropical storm’s arrival. On Thursday, he stayed up most of the night tracking Helene as she touched down as a Category 4, barreling up the Gulf coast of Florida and knocking out roads and cell service along the way. By Friday, she’d made it to western North Carolina as a Category 2, unleashing hell.

The death toll from Helene in North Carolina currently stands at 96, with 26 people still missing, according to an October 23 report from the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (NCDHHS). The situation worsened in the days after the storm due to a lack of running water and flooded roads that left residents stranded.

Haunting videos have been shared across news and social media of once-vibrant areas like Asheville’s River Arts District almost completely underwater. Some of the other hardest-hit cities and towns include Black Mountain, Swannanoa, Fairview, Spruce Pine, Hendersonville, Lansing, Burnsville, and Marshall.

In Transylvania County, one follower was in touch with Clark right as the storm began to hit. 

Victoria Arrington lives with her husband and daughter just outside the Brevard city limit and has been following North Carolina’s Weather Authority for six or seven years after noticing Clark’s accuracy and what she describes as his lack of “excitement” in his weather reports.

“The more and more I watched, I was like, ‘This guy is really good, and he’s breaking everything down, and his accuracy is good,’” Arrington says. “And he never gets excited. That’s the thing about Ethan: if he gets excited, it’s time to get excited, because it’s going to happen.”

Arrington built up a rapport with Clark over the years and was updating Clark about conditions, right up until losing service. When she regained service at the Henderson County line, two days later, she opened her phone to multiple messages from Clark.

“There’s two or three messages from Ethan,” she says, “He’s like, ‘Are you guys okay?’ ‘Are you there?’ ‘Is everything okay?’”

Clark has always tried to respond to as many comments and messages as possible. Lately, though, he’s getting comments of a different tier: People thanking him for saving their lives and the lives of loved ones. 

Clark’s interest in weather emerged in third grade while reading forecasts for the elementary school news.

From there, he says, he read books and taught himself how to make weather graphics. In seventh grade he began running a weather account called “Ethan’s Weather” for friends and family; once it began to pick up steam at the end of middle school, he rebranded as North Carolina’s Weather Authority and anonymously ran the account all through high school. 

“I didn’t want to be a nerd in high school, so I didn’t want my friends to know,” Clark said. “It was a massive secret until it started to sort of get out during one of the severe weather events—people heard my voice, and one of my high school friends recognized my voice.”

By the end of high school, the page had amassed around 200,000 followers, at which point Clark finally revealed his identity. One high school teacher, Lisa Patterson, says she still remembers the shock followers felt.

“They thought it was a retired meteorologist,” Patterson says. “When he announced right before he went to college who he was and who was behind North Carolina’s Weather Authority, people were floored. They were like, ‘Oh my gosh, I didn’t know you were a kid. I’ve been following you for years, and you’re the most accurate, the most reliable.’”

In high school, Clark was an intern meteorologist for WRAL, where he still works part-time. They, too, take North Carolina’s Weather Authority seriously. 

“Some of the meteorologists would run their forecast for the week, and then they would ask Ethan, ‘Well, what did you get for this week’s forecast?’ And they would change their forecast based on what Ethan said,” says Patterson.

But Clark’s most important work happens at his own desk in Raleigh, where he can usually be found analyzing multiple maps and radars. He blocks out time to devote to the weather each day, and if he anticipates a particularly busy week of weather, will highlight the bad days ahead of time.

“I plan my plans around trends,” Clark says. “I tell my friends: ‘You know just as well as me, if stuff goes bad, I’m not going to be able to come.’”

His process involves hours of looking at every possible model and creating maps, graphics, and reports. He also consults the National Weather Service to make sure their forecasts paint a similar picture. He kept up this regimen during Helene, and by the weekend, Clark was flooded with messages. 

On Saturday, he got a call from a producer at WRAL and left the NC State Football game early to compare reports and help them spread information.

“I was getting thousands and thousands of messages,” Clark says. “And [the producer says], ‘Just come here for like an hour or two and sit here and do whatever you see as important.’ I found some important stuff and they shared it.”

While most of Clark’s reports are written posts, he makes videos for extreme weather events, explaining conditions in layman’s terms. His video about flooding danger in the mountains was what led Hillsborough resident Tori Winfield to question the safety of her annual girl’s trip to Banner Elk, which she and her friends were planning to leave for on Thursday morning. 

“Ethan was talking about landslides and flash flooding, and how a lot of deaths occur in vehicles for flash flooding,” Winfield says. “I didn’t feel comfortable driving in that, nor did I feel comfortable having my girlfriends go out ahead of us.”

Because of his video, Winfield raised the alarm with her friends—some were completely unaware of the impending weather—and they canceled their Airbnb rental and set off for the coast instead. It was surreal, Winfield says, watching everything in western North Carolina unfold that weekend.

“Ethan posted a picture of Banner Elk, and the roads were washed out to where we would have been,” Winfield says. “We feel like we dodged a bullet there, and we were able to come back.”

Many people weren’t so lucky. There are still thousands of National Guard soldiers in western North Carolina aiding in relief efforts like roof clearance, search and rescue, and the delivery of resources, and federal assistance for Hurricane Helene exceeded $286 million this month, according to FEMA.

Breaking from his regular weather updates, Clark has used his platform to amplify missing person reports, donation requests, county announcements, and even a heartfelt poem from a Transylvania County elementary school teacher about the beauty and resilience of Southern Appalachia. 

“I’ve worked hard because I want people to know how bad it was in western North Carolina,” Clark says.

The work did take a toll, though. 

“Normally it’s fine,” Clark says. “The past two weeks, I’ve had no life. It’s been pretty much: do as much weather as possible, and then do as much class as possible, and then go to bed.”

But no matter what the weather is, Clark’s character holds steady, Patterson says.

“He’s still the same humble, down-to-earth kid,” says Patterson. “He’s like, ‘I just want to report the weather and let people know, and I don’t want them to panic. I want to inform. I want to teach. I just want to keep doing that, and if it happens to save some lives along the way, then that’s awesome.’”

Clark plans to graduate from NC State next fall. For as long as he runs North Carolina’s Weather Authority, Arrington says she will continue to tune in, always on the lookout for weather updates about the small town she calls home.

“He’s a state treasure,” Arrington says. “We’re lucky to have him here in North Carolina.”

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