Leak News
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, Helen 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 the Big Bend area of 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.
As of 2 a.m. EDT, its winds had already diminished to 90 mph, making Helene a Category 1 hurricane at the time, the center said.
Some 1.2 million customers in Florida were without power early Friday morning, according to utility tracker PowerOutage.us, along with approximately 734,000 in Georgia and 363,000 in South Carolina. Those numbers were growing rapidly. What’s more, about 87,000 homes and businesses were in the dark in North Carolina, for a total of almost 2.4 million in the four 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 New 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.
