Update: Helene slammed ashore near Perry, FL just before midnight as a Category 4 hurricane. Flooding has spread across the southeast and at least 204 people in six states are reported dead. Fortunately the storm came ashore in a sparsely populated region of the state where two previous hurricanes struck, leaving the coastal area looking like a war zone. Stay behinds were advised by emergency personal to inscribe their name and phone numbers on their skin with permanent marker. Seventy-five residents of Cedar Key chose not to evacuate. "Cedar Key as we knew it is gone" said a playwright living in the community. "The post office is destroyed. Several restaurants are destroyed. The Jiffy Food Store is destroyed. Vehicles are smashed in and turned upside down. Everything is impassable. It looks like a nuclear bomb went off.” The town of Spruce Pine, NC was drowned with 2 feet of rain as the storm moved northeast causing the worse flooding in a century. An estimated 4 million structures are without power. Damage assessments range from $15 billion to $26 billion.
{26.09.2024}Helene has quickly intensified as it approaches landfall to a Category 4 hurricane with 155 mph gusts. Potentially more devastating are expected storm surges reaching twenty fee and categorized as "catastrophic" and "unsurvivable". Landfall is expected Thursday night east of Appalachicola in the Big Bend region of the coast. Waters in the Gulf have reached record high temperatures that allow storms to intensify.
Helene is about 400 miles across. Hurricane force winds may extend 60 miles outward from the storm center. Winds have already left about 180,000 structures without power. The National Hurricane Center has described Helene as a "very dangerous and large major hurricane" Flooding may occur well inland in Alabama and Georgia before the system degrades in the Tennessee Valley over the weekend. This is a National Weather Service rainfall map without Sharpie editorial markings:
