Minute to minute, hour to hour, day to day. Holocaust survivor Susan Cernyak-Spatz’ sole survival method was to focus on living to the next minute, which she credits as being the mentality that kept her alive.

“If this storm had come through two weeks later, it would have had a bigger impact. So, my forecast is that we're still in pretty good shape,” said Howard Neufeld in an Asheville Citizen-Times story. Neufeld is known as the “Fall Color Guy” and is a professor of biology at Appalachian State University in Boone.

Hurricane Florence threatened areas far inland — including Appalachia — with landslides and other perilous effects. But people keep building in the mountains, apparently unfazed. “Early people, they were living away from streams and up on flat lands,” according to Dr. Ellen Cowen. “They weren’t the best views, but they were the safest to be. But now there’s nowhere to go, so the slopes have been cut.”