I was watching this storm closely all night, because the eye was "predicted" to head right over my house (north of Atlanta), with wind gusts 60+ mph. We have 100 foot trees all around my house so I was terrified. The NHC and all weather stations that listen to them kept showing the eye and cone of uncertainty going up towards Atlanta. When Helene hit Valdosta, she was already outside the cone, but the NHC didn't update anything. While the eastern side of a hurricane is always worse, places like Augusta (150 miles from me) were supposed to only get some milder wind gusts. Same with SC. At 5 am, when the storm was supposed to be on top of us, we didn't even have a breeze (just rain), and Augusta was getting hit with the eye. Still, the NHC stubbornly clung to their modeling that it was going to now make a sharp west turn and still hit Atlanta. Augusta was totally unprepared. SC too. NC wasn't expecting as direct of a hit as they got. Greenville NWS was the only one trying to tell everyone what was coming. All the other hurricane models apparently showed the storm hitting further east, but the NHC ignored all these other models' data and kept pushing their inaccurate one, even well after the storm was clearly on another path. NC/TN was expecting rain and some winds, but nothing like what they got. Mount Mitchell registered 106 mph gusts. It was so much worse than it was predicted to be. Add in to that the 2 days of rain in W NC and it was a recipe for disaster. I know hurricane prediction can be iffy, and it would have been bad even if people knew what was coming, but this seemed almost purposeful by the NHC to keep people from being adequately warned and prepared.