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Hurricane Helene wrought a level of destruction across the American Southeast that is practically unimaginable. In describing it, even officials struggle to convey the scope and scale.
It brought “catastrophic flooding and unimaginable damage,” the North Carolina State Climate Office said.
The town of Asheville was hit particularly hard, with an emergency services director saying that calling it “catastrophic devastation” wasn’t even apt.
“It would go a little bit further and say we have biblical devastation through the county,” they said. “We’ve had biblical flooding here and it has been extremely significant.”
And a county manager there referred to it as North Carolina’s own “Katrina.”
In one part of the state, the storm dropped 30 inches of rain in three days, sending rivers swelling, flooding entire towns, and demolishing buildings.
Part of the reason Helene was so destructive was that it hit in a location where storms of that magnitude don’t typically strike. Most lose force before they reach the Appalachian Mountains.
But Helene swelled right as it hit the coast and cut a unique path, striking towns unprepared for it. But why would a storm take such a route?
Well, the weather typically does what it wants. Unless you believe the storm had a secret agenda.
And there’s nothing QAnon believers love more than a secret agenda. Typically, they believe malevolent actors are working behind the scenes, but why can’t an inanimate object have an end goal?
On the forum Great Awakening, where believers in the theory flock, an old Reddit post is circulating, leading to some truly deranged takes about the nature and intent of the hurricane.
Six years ago, a redditor claimed on the site that Asheville was a known hotbed of Satanic practices.
“I have personally done many years of hands-on research, often dangerous 😤, in and around the city of Asheville, NC. Asheville is KNOWN as the satanist/pagan mecca of the east coast. Nestled in the mysterious Blue Ridge mountains as they descend from Virginia, such remote mountains and valleys have long been the desired sites for bizarre 👀 and often violent 😏 cult rituals, many culminating in human sacrifice.”
The post is nonsensical and filled with weird emojis winks—the kind you might not use when breaking news about human sacrifice—but given Asheville’s already granola lefty vibes, the Reddit post was taken as gospel.
“Chilling,” wrote the poster who found it.
“Asheville, in me mind, now correlates to the uber-wealthy Satanic enclave here in Northern Ca — the BOHEMIAN GROVE, long reported for human sacrifice, and attended in yearly gatherings by The Elite,” wrote one.
And they particularly honed in on one building in the town. The Biltmore.
One of America’s most famous Gilded Age manors, The Biltmore is owned by a family very popular in conspiratorial circles: The Vanderbilts.
Wrote a poster agreeing with the town’s supposedly eerie vibes: “Could very well be, It’s the home of the Biltmore Estate…. Think Biltmore, it had to be flooded. I have heard it is bigger and as bad as the Getty.”
Others tied the home to the Pizzagate conspiracy, which posited liberal elites are secretly pedophiles.
“The Biltmore’s creepiest feature is the indoor pool. And how the setup of the tiles/ropes/amenities line up very similarly to many of the Pizzagate paintings depicting children in empty pools,” wrote a poster. “I dug so deep into it that I ended up purchasing historical photos of the Biltmore to see if any analog details were present that couldn’t be found online.”
The original Reddit post was even attracting new attention and comments after the storm.
“I do not doubt Abba Father YAH wiping this place out recently with a flood due to the iniquity/ abominations such as satanic practices,” they added
Unfortunately, who was behind the hurricane isn’t agreed upon. While some believe God sent it to cleanse the town of evils, others think it was sent to destroy evidence of evil crime.
But whichever reason it might be, the users all agreed, because a disaster like this was so unexpected, it couldn’t have happened naturally.
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