Around 1 a.m. ET, Hurricane Helene, a Category 2 storm with sustained winds of 110 mph, began impacting southern Georgia. The National Weather Service advised residents to stay sheltered until the storm fully passed, cautioning that the eye of the hurricane is deceptively calm and hazardous winds intensify rapidly once it moves through. Helene is projected to turn northwestward and decelerate over the Tennessee Valley on Friday and Saturday. In preparation for the storm's extensive impact, President Joe Biden approved emergency declarations for Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Alabama to facilitate federal emergency management support.
"Helene is a very dangerous hurricane and could become a 'once-in-a-generation storm' across western South Carolina and North Carolina, as well as northern and eastern Georgia," stated Dan DePodwin, AccuWeather's senior director of forecasting operations.
Key Developments:
- Florida Governor Ron DeSantis confirmed one hurricane-related fatality late Thursday when a car on Interstate 4 in Tampa was struck by an overhead road sign.
- Helene is the fourth U.S. landfalling hurricane of 2024. Only five other years have recorded four or more hurricane landfalls: 1886, 1909, 1985, 2005, and 2020.
- Asheville, North Carolina received 8.34 inches of rain over a span of 26 hours from Wednesday until 4 p.m. Thursday. The National Weather Service noted that this exceeds the estimated 1-in-1,000-year rainfall for that area.
- The Florida Highway Patrol closed the Sunshine Skyway Bridge connecting St. Petersburg to Bradenton after winds reached 60 mph and conditions worsened.
- Florida State University (FSU) and Florida A&M University (FAMU) canceled classes but opened their facilities to students and local residents seeking shelter. The American Red Cross utilized FAMU’s Al Lawson Center as a public shelter while FSU opened the Donald L. Tucker Civic Center as a refuge for registered off-campus students starting Thursday.
Reports on specific damages from the counties that Helene tore through are still too preliminary. However, according to the National Hurricane Center, Category 4 hurricanes pose a "severe" threat to well-built framed structures, with the potential loss of both walls and roofs. The majority of trees are broken or uprooted, and electricity poles fall.
"Power disruptions could last for several weeks or even months. About weeks or months, the majority of the region will be uninhabitable due to Cat 4 storms, according to the hurricane center.
By midnight, a USA TODAY power outage tracker showed that over a million utility customers in Florida were without power. As Helene made her way farther onshore, more people were predicted to join.
Sheets of rain were gusting out of the sky at midnight in Tallahassee, a precursor of a far stronger storm. Some areas of the city experienced sporadic flickering of the electricity supply.