Helene was not just generational, but millennial. The Nolichucky River watershed had more than a 5,000-year rainfall with Helene, TVA said.

In East Tennessee, Carter, Cocke, Greene, Hamblen, Johnson, Sevier, Unicoi and Washington counties were the worst hit.

How are some TSSAA high school football teams in East Tennessee's hardest hit communities dealing with the aftermath from Hurricane Helene?

TVA's system of dams along the Tennessee River and its tributaries has been tested by record flooding from Hurricane Helene, which drenched Western North Carolina and East Tennessee as a tropical storm , washing out interstate lanes and trapping residents as small streams in the Great Smoky Mountains suddenly became raging rivers.