On a recent summer day, rain poured down outside climatologist David Easterling’s Hendersonville home. He made his way through the garage to the back door.
“This is a standard 4-inch rain gauge. You can buy it, but it’s semi-official,” Easterling said as he stepped out onto the wooden deck to explain. There, a plastic jug-like device was collecting water droplets.
It’s a warm July afternoon. Rain from this storm is barely covering the bottom of the gauge. Almost two years ago, Hurricane Helen brought unprecedented destruction to Western North Carolina. At that point Helen’s rainfall was nearly filling the gauge.
“I measured it two days in a row and it was about 7.9 inches and 7.8 inches,” Easterling said.
Ms. Easterling is one of the Hellenic survivors who collaborated with cartoonists and writers to create an anthology of graphic novels called “Islands in the Sky.” This anthology tells stormy stories through brightly illustrated panels, wonky lettering, and onomatopoeia. The piece also reminds readers that a once-in-a-millennium storm could happen again in our lifetime.
In the cartoon, climatologist David Easterling watches out his window as a storm rages in his backyard.
Now retired, Mr. Easterling worked for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. He modeled future climate simulations, focusing on how extreme weather events will change as the climate warms. His story “The Degree of Stormy Weather” tells how he survived one such extreme situation.
“In fact, someone asked me about that after my talk, and they said, ‘Well, that’s a once-in-a-millennium event. We won’t see another one in 1,000 years.’
“So I said, ‘No, that’s just a way of showing probabilities. The exact same thing could happen next year.’
“The probability of that happening is just very low,” Easterling said.
It’s more like a roll of the dice than a time limit. Imagine rolling a 1,000-sided die every year. A storm the size of Helen appears on only one side. But that possibility is changing as global temperatures rise. Warmer air holds more moisture, which can lead to more intense rainfall. Therefore, more sides of the die will experience stormy weather.
“Temperatures will probably rise by three or four degrees by the end of this century,” Easterling said. “It creates the potential for more of these events to occur just because there is more moisture in the air.”
Opportunity to “dramatize conflict”
The novel’s author, Andrew Aydin, said climate change was a big part of the “why” behind the project. He said it’s a problem that won’t go away.
“So many people here are turning a blind eye to climate change, and we can’t do that anymore, and we know that, and I think that’s changed people’s perception of climate change,” Aydin said.
Aydin is the founder of the Appalachian Comics Project. He previously collaborated with the late Georgia Congressman John Lewis on “March,” a comic book series depicting the history of the civil rights movement. Aydin is now focused on telling the story of the mountains where she grew up.
Aydin said he was inspired by his master’s thesis, “Hillbilly Talkback: Co-creation and Counter-Narratives in Appalachia,” written by Elon Justice of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Justice argues that there is a lot of media about Appalachia, much of it produced by people from outside the region, and much of it harmful to residents. Part of the solution, Justice says, is “co-creation,” bringing together collaborators across mediums to tell stories that more accurately reflect the subject matter.
In the case of “Islands in the Sky,” co-creation meant bringing together Hurricane Helen survivors and cartoonists. Aydin, who remembers the first time he bought a comic book at Piggly Wiggly in Hendersonville, described it as “the people’s medium.”
“Our ultimate goal is to empower the people of this region to tell their stories, and in doing so, take back their power over the destiny of this region,” Aydin said.
During the writing process, Helen survivors Jim and Ally Vardy connected with author Greg Pak, who wrote “Planet Hulk,” which was part of the original story for the 2017 Marvel film “Thor: Ragnarok.” Illustrator Josh Adams, who has worked on projects such as Doctor Who and Battlestar Galactica, brings the Bodhi family’s story to life on the page.
Jim Vardy said of his collaboration with Adams, “I gave him really little besides the script, and he did it really well.”
There are no more climate shelters
Jim and Allie Vardy climbed onto the roof of their home during Hurricane Helen. They watched as hundreds of rubber ducks floated by, waiting for the floodwaters to recede.
The story of the Bourdieh family produced one of the novel’s most revealing visuals. It depicts a stranded couple watching from their roof as a flock of rubber ducks pass by their house in a flood. For Ally Birdy, it highlighted the absurdity of the trauma they experienced.
“I remember me and Jim holding on to the gutter trying to get onto the roof, and Jim said, ‘Well, you can buy a new refrigerator,'” Allie Bordeside said.
Before Hurricane Helen, there was a pernicious myth that Asheville was an “eco-haven,” as Jim Birdy put it. But no matter where you live in North Carolina, the climate is changing as humans continue to burn fossil fuels and release heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere.
“As John Lewis used to say, if we don’t take the opportunity to dramatize conflict and show people that climate change is costing lives, not just money, we will miss an opportunity to save ourselves,” Aydin said.
He said he hopes the novel will educate readers about climate change and natural disasters, both their causes and the experience of living through events like Helen’s.
Easterling said it wants more people to pay attention to local weather forecasts.
“Like Helen, it could happen again next year,” Easterling said, but he thought it was unlikely. Still, as the world continues to warm, climate change continues to occur every year.
