It happened quickly. Rain was falling up and down the Blue Ridge Mountains, and things went from bad, to worse, to something beyond that.

The Tennessee Valley Authority had operated hundreds of dams through countless storms for decades, opening and closing floodgates that move water thousands of miles of shorelines along rivers and reservoirs. But on the night of Sept. 27, 2024 something occurred that had never been seen at the River Control Center in Knoxville. Word spread fast, necessarily.

“We could see Helene as many as seven, eight days out; it was a really well forecasted tropical system and we were able to evacuate water out of our reservoirs to create space for it,” TVA Vice President of River Management and Dam Safety Tom Barnett said at a remembrance event at Nolichucky Dam in

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