Crawfordville: Hurricane Helene made landfall in north-western Florida as a Category 4 storm as forecasters warned that the enormous system could create a “nightmare” storm surge and bring dangerous winds and rain across much of the southeastern US. There were at least three storm-related deaths.
The National Hurricane Centre in Miami said Helene roared ashore just before midnight on Thursday (Friday afternoon AEST) near the mouth of the Aucilla River in the Big Bend area of Florida’s Gulf Coast.
It had maximum sustained winds estimated at 225km/h.
Helene prompted hurricane and flash flood warnings extending far beyond the coast up into northern Georgia and western North Carolina.
More than 1.2 million homes and businesses were without power in Florida, more than 190,000 in Georgia and more than 30,000 in the Carolinas, according to the poweroutage.us tracking site.
The governors of those states and Alabama and Virginia all declared emergencies.
One person was killed in Florida when a sign fell on their car and two people were reported killed in a possible tornado in south Georgia as the storm approached.
“When Floridians wake up tomorrow morning, we’re going to be waking up to a state where very likely there’s been additional loss of life and certainly there’s going to be loss of property,” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said at a news conference.
Helene was moving rapidly inland after making landfall, with the centre of the storm set to race from southern to northern Georgia next. The risk of tornadoes also would continue overnight and into the morning across north and central Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and southern North Carolina, forecasters said. Later Friday, there would be the risk of tornadoes in Virginia
Beyond Florida, up to 25 centimetres of rain had fallen in the North Carolina mountains, with up to 36cm more possible before the deluge ends, setting the stage for flooding that forecasters warned could be worse than anything seen in the past century.
Heavy rains began falling and winds were picking up earlier in Valdosta, Georgia, near the Florida state line. The weather service said more than a dozen Georgia counties could see hurricane-force winds exceeding 177km/h
In south Georgia, two people were killed when a possible tornado struck a mobile home,
The storm made landfall in the sparsely populated Big Bend area, home to fishing villages and vacation hideaways where Florida’s Panhandle and peninsula meet.
Many were heeding the mandatory evacuation orders that stretched from the Panhandle south along the Gulf Coast in low-lying areas around Tallahassee, Gainesville, Cedar Key, Lake City, Tampa and Sarasota.
Federal authorities staged search-and-rescue teams as the weather service forecast storm surges of up to six metres and warned they could be particularly “catastrophic and unsurvivable” in Apalachee Bay.
While Helene will likely weaken as it moves inland, damaging winds and heavy rain were expected to extend to the southern Appalachian Mountains, where landslides were possible, forecasters said. Tennessee was among the states expected to get drenched.
For Atlanta, Helene could be the worst strike on a major Southern inland city in 35 years, said University of Georgia meteorology professor Marshall Shepherd.
Helene is the eighth named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, which began June 1. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has predicted an above-average Atlantic hurricane season this year because of record-warm ocean temperatures.
