Helene Churns Through Georgia After Lashing Florida’s Gulf Coast
After slamming into Florida as a Category 4 hurricane, Helene weakened into a tropical storm. It remains dangerous, forecasters say, as it moves north toward the Tennessee Valley.
Tropical Storm Helene moved into Georgia early Friday, after pummeling Florida’s Gulf Coast with heavy rains and fierce, whipping winds that sounded like jet engines revving. Packing 140-mile-per-hour winds when it made landfall, the Category 4 storm was the most powerful to ever strike Florida’s Big Bend region.
While Helene became a tropical storm with winds of 70 m.p.h. as it moved across Georgia, it continued to create dangerous conditions in the region. The authorities warned of a “nightmare” scenario for low-lying communities in western Florida that could be swallowed by a 20-foot storm surge.
President Biden, who approved disaster declarations for Florida, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina, urged people to take the storm “extremely seriously,” saying it was expected to be “catastrophic.”
Here’s what we’re covering:
Scenes from Florida: Along the state’s Gulf Coast, wind-whipped waves slammed bridges and violently lapped at partially submerged buildings. Falling trees knocked down power lines.
Impacts elsewhere: Powerful winds could extend as far as central Georgia. “Significant landslides” were predicted across southern Appalachia through Friday. In Greenville-Spartanburg, S.C., nearly 400 miles from Florida’s Gulf Coast, forecasters warned that the storm may be one of the region’s “most significant weather events” in modern history.
Power outages: More than 2 million customers were without power in the region early Friday, including 1.2 million in Florida and 730,000 in Georgia. Widespread damage to the power grid could cause outages that last days, if not weeks, forecasters warned.
A storm-related death: A 4-year-old girl was killed in a car crash in Catawba County, N.C., on Thursday, according to the North Carolina Department of Public Safety. Amid heavy rains, the girl was riding in an S.U.V. that veered over a roadway’s centerline and crashed into another vehicle.
Two people died in a tornado in Wheeler County, Ga., according to Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia. “We urge all Georgians to brace for further impact from Helene, remain vigilant, and pray for all those affected,” he said on social media.
Qasim Nauman
More than 2.2 million customers were without power in the region early Friday. A majority of them, 1.2 million, were in Florida. The number of customers with no power in Georgia and South Carolina rose overnight as Helene moved north after slamming into Florida.
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Sources: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration via Iowa State University All times on the map are Eastern.By William B. Davis
Helene weakened to a tropical storm early Friday, with winds of 70 miles per hour, as it moved north through Georgia, the National Hurricane Center said in its latest advisory. The storm is forecast to lose strength as it heads for the Tennessee Valley.
Helene has moved into Georgia, but there are lingering dangers for people waking up in Florida. At least 1.2 million customers there are without power and temperatures in parts of Florida are forecast to rise to 90 degrees on Friday. There are risks of heat-related illness, as well as carbon monoxide poisoning from the use of generators, says Parks Camp, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Tallahassee.
The high waters caused by the storm surge are expected to come down slowly over the next few hours in Florida, Camp says, urging people to wait until the waters recede and beware of downed power lines.
The number of customers without power has risen to nearly 2 million across four states, with the majority in Florida. But the total is rising in Georgia, where Helene crossed into after making landfall. Despite the storm's drop in strength, the authorities are warning of life-threatening conditions.
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Source: PowerOutage.us All times on the map are Eastern. Counties shown are those with at least 1 percent of customers without power.By The New York Times
Helene moved into Georgia with winds of 110 miles per hour early Friday, making it a Category 2 storm, the National Hurricane Center said in its latest advisory. This remained “an extremely dangerous and life-threatening situation,” the center added.
Helene was pushing water levels to record highs along the Gulf Coast. In Cedar Key at midnight, tide levels were at nine feet, more than two feet above the previous record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The Alafia River at Route 301, just southeast of Tampa, was recorded at 8.98 feet, compared to the previous record of 6.6 feet.
One measure of Helene’s enormity is that more than 37 million people from the southern tip of Florida to the western part of North Carolina are under a tropical storm warning early Friday, meaning that tropical storm conditions, with winds of as much as 73 miles per hour, are expected in the area within 36 hours.
For days, the authorities have warned that storm surge is the biggest threat from Helene. Early Friday, there were already signs of its devastation. The National Weather Service office in Tallahassee reported that a storm surge of up to 10 feet was moving mobile homes around in Steinhatchee, a coastal community near where the storm made landfall.
We are smack dab in the middle of the eye of Helene and it is so quiet, you can hear the crickets chirping and frogs croaking. There is debris littering the pavement and many of the trees have lost their leaves. Lightning and power flashes ignite the sky, an ominous reminder that the eye wall will soon return.
Helene is the fourth hurricane this year to make landfall along the U.S. Gulf Coast. That's only happened five other times since 1851, according to Phil Klotzbach, an expert on hurricanes.
Qasim Nauman
More than a million customers are without power in Florida, according to PowerOutage.us. Another 58,000 customers are without power in Georgia and North Carolina.
Gov. Ron DeSantis warned that there could likely be more deaths from the storm by Friday morning. So far, the authorities are aware of one death tied to the hurricane, he said. “You’re going to have people that are going to lose their homes because of this storm.”
Helene’s storm surge has pushed water levels about two feet above record highs in Tampa Bay, said Jennifer Hubbard, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Tampa. In St. Petersburg, water levels are now at at 5.78 feet, surpassing the record during Hurricane Elena in 1985.
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Credit...Nicole Craine for The New York Times
Elisabeth Parker
Reporting from the Tampa Bay area
Tarpon Springs officers are taking a boat into a low-lying neighborhood to rescue “a few people” as the water continues to rise. People across Tampa are saying it’s the highest water level they’ve ever seen.
The city of St. Petersburg, Fla., shut down the Northeast Sewer Treatment Plant to protect it from storm surge. Nearby residents should not drain water, take showers, do laundry or flush toilets, and must brush their teeth outdoors or over a container, the city said in a statement.
Main Street Mercantile in Cedar Key, Fla., part of Mendy Allen’s restoration project, faces an uncertain future in the shadow of Hurricane Helene.Credit...Abigail Geiger
Mendy Allen was reflecting on life on Cedar Key, a small island community jutting perilously into the Gulf of Mexico, from a hotel in Gainesville, Fla., only a few hours before Helene was expected to make landfall. Ms. Allen grew up in Gainesville and moved to Cedar Key nine years ago when her husband, Mike Allen, the director of the University of Florida’s Nature Coast Biological Station, suggested she “come home” to the island nook she had fallen in love with as a child.
Ms. Allen, 61, channeled this love for the island community into the Carmen Project, a business effort to revitalize two historic buildings in downtown Cedar Key. Since 2021, Ms. Allen and her business partner have meticulously restored the Lutterloh and Schlemmer buildings down to their oyster-pocked tabby concrete, a true mark of Florida history.
But on Labor Day last year, what was meant to be a celebration of a new addition — a furnishings store — became a dash to prepare for a hurricane. Idalia had arrived.
“So, instead of getting ready to open, we started packing up,” Ms. Allen said.
After recovering from Idalia, Ms. Allen said they had been more prepared to handle Debby, which came ashore last month and fortunately spared the historic buildings. But as prepared as she can be, Ms. Allen expressed uncertainty in the hours ahead of Helene’s landfall.
“Now there’s this time of waiting and watching,” she said. “My mind has already started the process of: ‘What are we going to come back to? What are we going to see?’ My hope is that those buildings will be there. But I’m just not sure at this point.”
These hurricanes are not Ms. Allen’s first experience with tropical storms in Cedar Key. When she moved to the island community, as her husband was still building the biological station, Hurricane Hermine hit late at night in August 2016. She wasn’t sure she could stay. Then she saw the community rally. She saw Cedar Key repair itself. And that still resonated on Thursday while she was hunkering down in Gainesville.
“My heart and my soul is in that little community,” Ms. Allen said.
She said she and her husband know the risks they face to live on the Gulf Coast.
“Part of the process is getting my mind to: ‘Here we go again. We’ve got to do it again,’” Ms. Allen said. “When we see people who have been in Cedar Key for a long time — they’re so resilient. They’ve shown us how to do it. Ever since Hermine, we’ve seen it. And we asked them, ‘How does it get better?’ But we watched it get better.”
Gainesville is more inland than other cities in Florida, but the gusts of wind are picking up. Trees are swaying over a line of trucks parked outside of the place where I’m staying.
Hurricane Helene arriving in the Tampa, Fla. on Thursday.Credit...Nicole Craine for The New York Times
As Helene thrashes the Florida Panhandle with “unsurvivable” storm surge and “catastrophic” winds Thursday evening, people across the Southeast were bracing for the storm’s arrival in their region in the coming hours and days.
The worst was expected to hit in the late evening and overnight in the Big Bend of Florida, including Tallahassee. Here’s a look at the next few days.
Friday: The storm quickly follows Interstate 75 north out of Florida.
The storm is expected to move very quickly overnight, reaching north Georgia by Friday morning, and the worst will be quickly over in Florida. But this storm’s quick pace will mean the core of its most intense winds could extend all the way to near the Atlanta metro area.
Because of the vast size of Helene, the tropical storm-force wind gusts are also likely across Georgia and the Carolinas late Thursday and into the day Friday, particularly over the higher terrain of the southern Appalachians.
Even worse is the heavy tropical rainfall tied up in the storm, which will push further into the Appalachian Mountains, where the National Weather Service has warned the storm will be one of the most significant “in the modern era.”
For the third day in a row, from foothills in Atlanta to mountains in Asheville, where rivers and creeks are already pushed to the brim, even more extreme rain is expected to fall on Friday.
The combination of the wind and the wet soil will make it much easier for trees to fall. And it makes the rough terrain susceptible to landslides.
As Helene moves north, it will begin to spin around another storm system, which will make it turn left over Tennessee.
This weekend: The remnants of the storm will linger
Rain will fall across central Kentucky and Tennessee eastward to the central Appalachians and Mid-Atlantic region the remnants of Helene combine with another weather system.
This rainfall could result in more flooding as the rains persist through Monday.
The White House just announced that President Biden approved an emergency declaration for South Carolina, adding to the list of southern states that have gotten preemptive support to respond to the hurricane.
An alert just went out in Alachua County, where Gainesville is: “Significant reports of downed trees & power lines in Western Alachua County.” Poweroutage.us now says nearly 700,000 customers have lost power in Florida.
In a handout image from Sofar Ocean, similar yellow solar-powered sensors were dumped into the pathway of Hurricane Helene on Wednesday.Credit...Sofar Ocean
More than a dozen yellow solar-powered sensors, each about the size of a beach ball, were dumped into the pathway of Hurricane Helene on Wednesday.
The sensors collect data like wave height, sea surface temperature, the strength of the current and wind speeds that could make it easier for the National Hurricane Center to predict how a catastrophic storm like Hurricane Helene develops as it moves toward shore. That data could eventually lead to better weather forecasts and warnings.
The center started using data collected from the company that makes the sensors, Sofar Ocean, in July, according to the company.
“The uncertainty of weather is incredibly dangerous,” said Tim Janssen, the chief executive of Sofar, the maritime technology company. Dr. Janssen, who studied oceanography before joining Sofar, explained that one of the biggest challenges involving hurricane prediction is a lack of data.
The buoys measured wave heights of 25 feet, and Sofar modeling based on that data predicted waves could grow twice that height when the storm passed over the sensors dotting the waters off the west coast of Florida on Thursday night.
About 500 of these sensors are currently in the open ocean all over the world. They have been used to collect data on Hurricane Francine earlier this month and Hurricane Idalia, which struck Florida in 2023.
Calhoun Street in Tallahassee, Fla., on Thursday, covered by a canopy of oak trees.Credit...Zack Wittman for The New York Times
Tallahassee, Fla., with its towering oaks, stately pines and shaded streets, faces a severe threat to its iconic canopy of trees as Helene approaches.
The state’s capital, Tallahassee has long prioritized protecting its trees, which cover more than half the city and are a cherished part of its identity. Its famous canopy roads, shaded by moss-draped live oaks, sweet gums and hickories are a defining feature.
Among the city’s notable trees is the Lichgate Oak, an ancient tree that has become a natural landmark. The city is also believed to be the home of two “Moon Trees” — a sycamore and a loblolly pine — grown from seeds taken into space during the Apollo 14 mission in 1971.
However, the very trees that shape Tallahassee’s character could become a hazard during the storm. A city report on its urban forest warns that much of the city’s trees are short-lived and have wood that is prone to breakage under stress, making them particularly vulnerable to strong winds.
Helene could test this vulnerability. Though Tallahassee is located at least 30 miles inland, the city is under a rare hurricane warning. Forecasters have warned that the storm could bring gusts of up to 75 miles per hour, and potentially stronger winds exceeding 110 m.p.h. The city has never before recorded sustaining hurricane-force winds.
Brenda Geddes, 60, a longtime Tallahassee resident who was stocking up at a Walmart on Wednesday in advance of the storm, said of the trees, “When it’s a storm like this, you can only do so much.”
In past hurricanes, the city has largely been protected from strong winds because of its geography, but storms have still caused significant damage outside the city.
Donna Staab, 67, who lives about an hour and a half southeast of Tallahassee in Keaton Beach, recalled how Hurricane Idalia last year felled over a dozen trees on her neighbor’s property and a few on her own. The sound of wood chippers became a familiar backdrop.
“You could hear it for weeks afterward,” Ms. Staab said.
The fear of similar destruction is weighing on Tallahassee residents such as Natasha Sutherland, 39, who, along with her husband, decided to head to Alabama for safety on Wednesday. As she drove north, she became emotional while taking in the view of the city’s overhanging trees and her favorite places.
“I started crying a little bit,” she said, as a thought occurred to her: “‘Gosh, this might be the last time I see it like this ever again.’”
Across Florida’s Big Bend region, which has already endured two other hurricanes in 13 months, many more people appeared to be heeding evacuation orders this time.Credit...Zack Wittman for The New York Times
In his 58 years, John Posey, a lifelong resident of the Forgotten Coast of Florida on the remote eastern edge of the Panhandle, had never evacuated for a hurricane — neither for Dennis in 2005, nor for Michael in 2018.
But on Wednesday, as he stood outside his namesake seafood restaurant in Panacea, Fla., a community of about 800 near the marshy shores of Ochlockonee Bay, Mr. Posey admitted that this hurricane felt different. Helene was closing in and, for the first time, he wasn’t sure he could stay.
Across Florida’s Big Bend region, which has already endured two other hurricanes in 13 months, many more people appeared to be heeding evacuation orders this time, leaving the small towns that dot the coast eerily empty on Thursday.
That was especially true in three rural counties that had taken the rare step of ordering mandatory countywide evacuations. Homes and businesses in Wakulla County, where Panacea is, were boarded up. In Crawfordville, even the local Waffle House was covered with plywood.
The streets of Carrabelle, a waterfront city with a population of about 2,600 in neighboring Franklin County, appeared mostly deserted. In Taylor County, the sheriff’s office asked residents staying home to email local officials so that they could track who might need rescuing after the storm.
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Dekle Beach, a small coastal community, is mostly empty before Hurricane Helene makes landfall.Credit...Paul Ratje for The New York Times
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A sign warned motorists outside Tallahassee, Fla., of the hurricane warning in effect Wednesday night.Credit...Paul Ratje for The New York Times
The Florida National Guard arrived on Thursday morning in Cedar Key, a tiny city that sits on a barrier island in the Gulf of Mexico, to alert the remaining residents about the approaching danger.
“In the last storm here, people would walk by us with beer and we’d say, ‘There’s a hurricane here,’” Capt. John Meacham said. “They’d say, ‘We’ll stick it out.’”
He noticed fewer such people on Thursday.
John MacDonald, the director of emergency management for Levy County, which includes Cedar Key, said he had hoped to see more residents in emergency shelters. “But I know some people seek shelter with family or somewhere else,” he added.
Capt. Jeff Yarbrough, a spokesman for the Wakulla County Sheriff’s Office, said deputies had been thorough in going door to door beginning on Wednesday to urge people to get out, especially if they live south of U.S. 98, which runs parallel to the Gulf Coast.
“The conditions for our county are pretty severe, more so than we’ve had in recent memory,” he said. Perhaps 200 people whom deputies had contacted in the county of about 35,000 said they planned to stay, he estimated early on Thursday afternoon.
To the southeast in Steinhatchee, a fishing town of a few hundred people, Tyler Rayborn, 31, bluntly summarized the feel of the place as he worked with a friend to anchor down the sign for his family’s hardware store: “It’s dead. Town’s dead.”
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Tyler Rayborn, 31, bluntly summarized the feel of Steinhatchee, a fishing town of a few hundred people, as he worked with a friend to anchor down the sign for his family’s hardware store: “It’s dead. Town’s dead.”Credit...Scott McIntyre for The New York Times
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Residents in Crystal City, Fla., protected a local shopping center with tarp, plywood and sandbags on Thursday.Credit...Scott McIntyre for The New York Times
However, not everyone was planning to leave, Mr. Rayborn said, including himself. He said he would stay at his home, a short drive inland, before heading back to reopen as soon as possible so people could get supplies.
Many who own homes in the small community are relatively new to the state, he said, and spooked by the threat of the storm.
“Us, born and raised, we just stay here,” said Mr. Rayborn, who had a University of Florida alligator tattoo and an elaborate artistic sketch of the state visible on his left arm. “There’s nowhere for us to go.”
A little bit further north, near Keaton Beach, Donna and Greg Staab sat on their porch on Thursday morning enjoying a cool breeze. They planned to head for a neighbor’s homemade bunker in the afternoon.
“We’re just hoping for the best, that’s all you can do at this point,” Ms. Staab said. “Just stay and pray.”
Further south, near Tampa Bay, which is far from Hurricane Helene’s winds but was already experiencing storm surge on Thursday, some residents accustomed to street flooding said they would stay.
Joe and Steph Powless rode bicycles to the beach in Gulfport, west of St. Petersburg, to check on conditions.
“It’s just so common,” Mr. Powless said as waters inundated the streets. The couple lives in a low-lying area under a mandatory evacuation order but were staying put, they said, along with most of their neighbors.
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Gina Ryals, measures the rising floodwaters outside of her home in the Twin Cities mobile home park in St. Petersburg, Fla.Credit...Nicole Craine for The New York Times
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A man wades through floodwaters, his pants rolled above the knee, carrying a Trader Joe’s shopping bag.Credit...Nicole Craine for The New York Times
In asking people to evacuate, emergency managers repeatedly reminded residents that they did not need to go too far from home — likely just a few miles inland, away from the deadly storm surge, which is expected to reach up to 20 feet high in parts of northern Florida.
Cole Hall, a 25-year-old oyster farmer from Oyster Bay, decided to stay with family about 10 miles north of Panacea.
“We got oysters. We got beer. We got generators. We got pretty much everything we need,” he said. “We got gator on the grill right now.”
On Thursday, he was busy sinking the cages that house his growing oyster crop to the bottom of the bay in an effort to protect the seeds from possible storm surge.
His biggest fear is losing his farm, he said. “My next year’s product could potentially be lost, and I wouldn’t have anything for next year to sell.”
In Panacea, Mr. Posey, the restaurant owner, was assessing his situation as he looked out over the miserable, steady rain that fell most of the day.
“I’d be crabbing in this,” said Mr. Posey, who is also a commercial fisherman. He remembered past storms: “During Dennis, I was rescuing people with an aluminum boat.”
But he worried that strong winds could rip off roofs. And he’s older now, he said — a grandfather looking to stay safe.
Mr. Posey said he would wait for the water to get to the door of his restaurant.
Then, he might go.
Valerie Crowder, Jacey Fortin, Rachel Nostrant, Kate Selig and Isabelle Taft contributed reporting.
Hurricane Beryl hit coastal towns near Houston earlier this year.Credit...Meridith Kohut for The New York Times
When a hurricane threatens land, one of the top questions on people’s minds is what category is it, and that’s for good reason. Hurricanes are categorized by their wind speeds on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale, which provides useful information on the storm’s winds, their expected impact and potential damage.
Hurricanes are split into five categories based on the wind speeds they generate:
Category 1: winds between 74 miles per hour and 95 m.p.h. These are considered “very dangerous winds” that will cause some damage, even tearing the roofs of “well-constructed frame homes,” and taking shingles, vinyl siding and gutters, according to the National Hurricane Center.
Category 2: winds between 96 m.p.h. and 110 m.p.h. Hurricanes at this level carry “extremely dangerous winds” that will cause vast damage, including major damage to roofs and siding and uprooting trees. A near-total loss of power is expected.
Category 3: winds between 111 m.p.h. and 129 m.p.h. This is the level at which a hurricane is considered “major,” according to the Hurricane Center, and its wind speeds indicate that “devastating damage will occur.” Homes might see major damage, such as the removal of roof decking and gable ends. Snapped or uprooted trees might block roads, while electricity and water will likely be unavailable for days or even weeks.
Category 4: winds between 130 m.p.h. and 156 m.p.h. Catastrophic damage is expected, with homes sustaining severe damage that can include losing their roofs and some exterior walls. Most trees will be snapped or uprooted and power poles will be downed, causing residential areas to become isolated, according to the Hurricane Center. Power outages are expected to last weeks or even months, and most of the area will be uninhabitable for that period.
Category 5: winds of 157 m.p.h. and greater. At this point, “a high percentage of framed homes will be destroyed, with total roof failure and wall collapse,” according to the Hurricane Center. There will be fallen trees and downed power poles, isolating residential areas with power outages lasting for weeks or months. As with a Category 4, most of the area will be uninhabitable for weeks or months.
The scale does not account for other deadly hazards associated with tropical storms, like storm surge, rainfall flooding, and tornadoes.
Hurricane Andrew crippled Florida’s insurance market in 1992.Credit...Ray Fairall/Associated Press
Hurricane Helene isn’t just a threat to the safety of the people in its path. Depending on how much damage the storm causes, it could also threaten Florida’s insurance market — and recent research suggests that market is dangerously vulnerable.
Catastrophic storms have crippled Florida’s insurance market in the past, including after Hurricane Andrew struck near Miami in 1992, leaving about a dozen insurers insolvent and causing many national insurance companies to flee the state. Florida’s insurance market is now dominated by small insurers, which often have less money in the bank than big national carriers — making them more vulnerable to collapse in the face of too many insurance claims.
Last year, researchers at Columbia, Harvard and the U.S. Federal Reserve Board sounded the alarm about Florida and the home insurance industry. In a paper, they warned that the stability of Florida’s insurers was worse than it seemed, because those insurers appeared to be getting inflated scores from the company charged with evaluating their financial health.
“Our research shows that Florida’s property insurers are far more vulnerable than people might think, with insolvency potentially in the cards,” said Parinitha Sastry, an assistant professor of finance at Columbia Business School and one of the paper’s authors.
The researchers warned about a specific scenario: A big storm hits Florida, causing a tidal wave of insurance claims. Insurers that looked stable on paper start to fail, preventing them from paying out claims to homeowners. That in turn drives up the number of homeowners defaulting on their mortgages because they can’t afford to repair their homes.
At that point, what started as a Florida problem becomes a national problem. The organizations that buy most U.S. mortgages, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are backed by the federal government. If Florida homeowners start defaulting on their mortgages, Fannie and Freddie stand to lose money — and those losses could get passed on to federal taxpayers.
“Our research shows that the financial costs of fragile insurers go well beyond the borders of Florida,” said Ishita Sen, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School and another of the paper’s authors. She said the insurance requirements imposed by Fannie and Freddie are poorly designed.
The stakes could be gigantic, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat and chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, warned this summer as he made a comparison to the 2008 financial crisis.
“Who will be left holding the bag?” Mr. Whitehouse said during a hearing in June on climate change and insurance markets. “The federal budget takes a hit because these insurers and their policies are accepted by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, who either own or guarantee a large part of our $12 trillion mortgage market.”
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