Helene Slams Florida As Category 4 Hurricane Then Rapidly Weakens As It Moves Inland

Hurricane Helene has been downgraded to a tropical storm. It made landfall in Florida's Big Bend as a Category 4 hurricane, causing power outages for nearly 2.8 million residents across multiple states and resulting in at least three fatalities.

Friday, September 27th 2024, 7:14 am

By: CBS News, News On 6

Hurricane Helene was a dangerous Category 4 storm when it made landfall over Florida's Big Bend area late Thursday night but weakened rapidly as it raced inland early Friday and was downgraded to a tropical storm in mere hours, the National Hurricane Center said. Still, Helene was bringing a "life-threatening" storm surge, strong winds, and heavy rain, the center said.

As of 5 a.m. EDT, Helene was approximately 40 miles east of Macon, Georgia, and 100 miles southeast of Atlanta and was racing north at 30 mph, the Miami-based hurricane center said. It was packing maximum sustained winds of 70 mph, 4 mph below the threshold for a storm to have hurricane status and half what they were when Helene moved ashore over Florida's Gulf Coast.

Helene made landfall about 10 miles west of Perry, Florida, at 11:10 p.m. Eastern Time, according to the hurricane center, with maximum sustained winds of 140 miles per hour.

"This is the fourth hurricane to make landfall on the Gulf Coast this year. This has happened only five other times in history," meteorologist Stephanie Abrams of The Weather Channel said on "CBS Mornings" Friday.

Some 1.2 million customers in Florida were without power early Friday morning, according to utility tracker PowerOutage.us.

Approximately 840,000 in Georgia, 552,000 in South Carolina, and 191,000 in North Carolina had no electricity. Those numbers were growing rapidly.

About 9,000 homes and businesses had no power in Virginia, for a total of almost 2.8 million in the five states.

So far, there have been at least three weather-related deaths attributed to Helene. Two people were killed in Wheeler County, Georgia, the county coroner, Ted Mercer, told CBS News by phone. No further details were provided.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis confirmed in a late-night news conference that at least one person was killed in the Tampa area when a traffic sign fell on a vehicle.

DeSantis said about 3,500 National Guardsmen were standing by to respond to emergencies.

Several airports closed because of the storm, and airlines canceled nearly 1,300 flights Thursday, according to FlightAware. More than 600 U.S. flights were already canceled as of 5:30 a.m.