Hurricane Helene Slams Florida: Catastrophic Storm Surge and Heavy Rainfall Expected

Hurricane Helene, a Category 4 storm with 130 mph winds, is poised to hit Florida's Big Bend region, bringing deadly storm surges and heavy rain. Officials have issued urgent evacuation orders, warning of severe flooding and damage. Airports have shut down, and significant economic losses are anticipated.

Driving rain flooded roadways and closed down airports in Florida as an intensifying Hurricane Helene marched toward the state's panhandle region, bringing the threat of a potentially deadly storm surge to much of the coastline. The storm became a major Category 4 hurricane on Thursday with sustained winds near 130 mph (209 kph), the National Hurricane Center said, and was expected to continue gaining power. Helene was forecast to make landfall around 11 p.m. EDT in Florida's Big Bend region, Florida officials said.

Officials pleaded with residents in the path of the storm to heed mandatory evacuation orders or face life-threatening conditions. Helene's surge - the wall of seawater pushed on land by hurricane-force winds - could rise to as much as 20 feet (6.1 meters) in some spots, as tall as a two-story house, the center's director, Michael Brennan, said in a video briefing. "A really unsurvivable scenario is going to play out" in the coastal area, Brennan said, with water capable of destroying buildings and carrying cars pushing inland.

The hurricane was about 130 miles (209 km) west of Tampa, Florida, as of 5 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT), the center said. Strong rain bands were whipping parts of coastal Florida, and rainfall had already lashed Georgia, South Carolina, central and western North Carolina and portions of Tennessee. Atlanta, hundreds of miles north of Florida's Big Bend, was under a tropical storm warning. In Pinellas County, which sits on a peninsula surrounded by Tampa Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, roads were already filling with water before noon. Officials warned the storm's impact could be as severe as last year's Hurricane Idalia, which flooded 1,500 homes in the low-lying coastal county.

(With inputs from agencies.)