Not to discount or minimize the several extremely destructive forest fires that plague California from time to time, no singular natural disaster event that occurred in 2024 can match September's visit by Hurricane Helene to Western North Carolina. 

That storm, first bringing its expected rains, high winds, and flooding to Florida with the associated damage of high tides, was foreseen and expected. But the shocking destruction that one storm brought to Western North Carolina, over thirty inches of rain, wasn't.