On the morning of Friday, September 27, 2024, Will Runion was juggling two jobs at once on his 736-acre cattle and hay farm in northeast Tennessee. He was cutting hay and also getting ready for a riverfront campground meant to bring in tourists—and maybe a more stable income—because the Nolichucky River was already running high from Hurricane Helene’s heavy rains.
When the water kept climbing, it didn’t feel like weather anymore. Around 11 a.m., the brown river topped its banks. Runion and others scrambled to salvage equipment and move cows to higher ground, but the flood expanded so quickly that they were nearly trapped as water surged into low-lying areas behind them. By afternoon, the Nolichucky had swollen to some 1,200 feet wide—nearly 10 times its usual size—snapping trees and sending barns, roofs, hay bales, and household debris swirling. At about 8 p.m., the river crested and started to recede, leaving fields covered in debris, dead fish, and tomatoes from upstream vegetable growers. Runion found two holes in his hay pastures—gouged down to a depth of 12 feet—along with other areas buried under up to 8 feet of sand or silt.
Helene dropped up to 30 inches of rain across southern Appalachia, triggering historic flooding and landslides across North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Kentucky, and Virginia—a largely rural region where agriculture is both an economic engine and a cultural anchor. Misryoum newsroom reported that in North Carolina alone, Helene caused an estimated $4.9 billion in damage to the state’s agriculture sector, while Tennessee agricultural losses were estimated at $1.3 billion. Thousands of farmers lost more than crops: tools, machinery, barns, buildings, animals, and fences. But more than a year later, growers are still fighting for something less visible and harder to replace.
Soil, the stuff that makes farming possible, can take centuries to build—and it doesn’t always come back the way it was. Runion said the loss was immediate in a way that was hard to ignore. “When you see 4 feet of sandy soils on top of your topsoil, you know that’s going to be a challenge,” he said. “That was overwhelming.” He sent drone footage to Forbes Walker, an environmental soil specialist with University of Tennessee Extension, asking a question that has been haunting many researchers after Helene and similar disasters: how do you fix this? “I don’t know,” Walker recalled thinking when he got Runion’s email. “How do we fix this?”
To understand what’s going wrong, scientists point out that floodwaters can either wash away significant topsoil or dump new sediment on top of it. When nutrients move with eroded topsoil—or when sandy layers leave little organic matter and poor structure behind—fields can become unusable even if the land looks “there.” “These aren’t soils yet,” said Stephanie Kulesza, a nutrient and soil scientist at North Carolina State University. “They are in their infancy now. The clock
has been reset.” Climate change, Misryoum editorial desk noted, is making these kinds of storms more intense and less predictable, with one study finding Helene’s rainfall was 10 percent heavier due to man-made climate change, and research suggesting “100-year storms” could become three times more likely and 20 percent more severe over the next 50 years. And while there’s plenty of attention on flooding impacts above ground, there’s still “little solid information” about what happens
to soil during a flood—or what to do when soil is eroded or buried.
So Runion’s recovery has become, in part, a living experiment. After debris removal and FEMA cleanup, he rebuilt from October to April, removing debris, bulldozing sand off fields to reach closer to topsoil, filling holes, and grading uneven areas. He received close to $1 million in state and federal aid, but said he’s stretching the money because replacing equipment and paying for clean-up labor, fertilizer, and fuel would be easy to exceed. By June, he managed enough hay for 125 cattle, though not enough to sell—and hay sales typically make up about a third of the farm’s income.
Walker’s team is now testing whether different amendments can help wheat and fescue recover on damaged, sandy ground. Across about 300 test plots, they’re looking at hay, wood chips, poultry litter, and biochar, plus Triple 19, a plant food with equal parts nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium. When Misryoum visited the farm in 2025 with Walker, some plots were still mostly bare, while others had tufts of green. Walker said flood-damaged soil literature is “thin,” and that there aren’t many systematic studies—especially in Appalachia, where floods of this magnitude are historically rare. The work matters, he argues, because for farmers, waiting on luck is expensive.
On the hill above the river, Runion is also making decisions with incomplete data. He didn’t plant until this past fall on about 65 acres of the 220 that were underwater. He used a disking machine but had to stop often to clear sticks and trash and grade out low spots, then mixed in mulch and planted oats, wheat, and fescue. Walker drove Misryoum past one field, which still looked sandy—grasses only a pale green shadow on tan land. Runion said the greenery was “struggling to have any vigor about it,” and they won’t know for sure until spring. Still, preliminary results suggest grasses grow better where mulch is used; woody debris may reduce erosion and help seeds germinate in that rough matrix. But wood chips can also consume nitrogen as they break down, so the timing and pre-decomposition of the material may matter more than many people expect.
On a late-afternoon visit, I remember the smell—wet soil with that sharp, mineral edge—mixed with the faint dust kicked up as Runion graded new sections for the campground. More than 18 months after Helene, he’s still removing debris and rebuilding. He thinks he can get the campground open by late summer or early fall. The farm, he says, still “has a lot to offer.” But the hay recovery is likely to be slower than hoped. He expects lower yields and lower-quality bales, with added costs. “Now it’s a four- to five-year [plan], I think,” Runion said. “It has been frustrating, and exhausting, too.” And yet the experiments keep moving—measuring biomass, protein, digestibility, and whether treatments improve the sandy soil’s ability to hold water—because for farmers, the ground beneath their boots is no longer just a backdrop. It’s the main storyline, still unfolding.
Runswick Bay’s Landslide: Painting, Timeline, and Risk
💬 Join the discussion — share your opinion!