cw: traumatic death It's tough to have to decide when it's too dangerous for rescuers to try to reach a person needing help. Some blame the victim. But the town never saw a flood like this before. Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs shows once again that he's one of the NYT's best field reporters. Gift.

For Hours, He Clung to a Tree and Cried for Help. But None Came.

Bruce Tipton, 75, was in his trailer home when it was washed away by Tropical Storm Helene’s floodwaters. As his agonized family watched, he slipped into the raging river.

Absolutely heartbreaking.

Sheer volume caused the massive flooding. Ed Clark of NOAA's National Water Center: The hurricane brought "an astronomical amount of precipitation.” "I never thought in my career that we would measure rainfall in feet." Climatologist Kathie Dello: The “fingerprints of climate change” are clear.

Here's how Helene and other storms dumped a whopping 40 trillion gallons of rain on the South

Meteorologists calculate that more than 40 trillion gallons of rain drenched the Southeast United States in the last week from Hurricane Helene and a run-of-the-mill rainstorm that sloshed in ahead of...