Destruction from Tropical Storm Helene stretched nearly 800 miles from South Florida into the mountains of Appalachia on Friday. The huge storm spawned flash floods and mudslides on its dash inland after bashing the Gulf Coast.
In the densely populated Tampa Bay region, neighborhood after neighborhood was underwater, the result of a powerful storm surge. And across North Carolina, more than two million people were under flash flood warnings at midday Friday.
Helene raced ashore just before midnight as the strongest hurricane ever to hit Florida’s Big Bend region. Fierce winds snapped trees and power poles, ripped roofs and shattered windows. The rising Gulf swept into communities hundreds of miles from the storm’s center.
Here’s what we’re covering:
- Florida damage: Though Helene was frightening, coming ashore as a powerful Category 4 storm, it moved quickly and shifted east before landfall, avoiding a direct hit to Tallahassee, Florida’s capital city of about 200,000. Recovery efforts were focused on clearing roads covered by mud, debris and downed trees.
- Big Bend hit: The heaviest blow appeared to fall on Florida’s sparsely populated Big Bend region, which had yet to recover from two other storms over the last 13 months. “It looks like a nuclear bomb went off,” said Michael Bobbitt, who lives in tiny Cedar Key, Fla., jutting into the Gulf of Mexico.
- Power outages: The storm knocked out power to more than 6 million customers in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia as it moved inland. Temperatures could reach 90 degrees in parts of Florida on Friday, creating another risk for vulnerable populations without air-conditioning.
- Impact elsewhere: The storm brought flooding and tornadoes to much of the Southeast and landslides around Asheville, N.C., and a landslide blocked all lanes of Interstate 40 in the mountains east of the city. At least 20 people were reported dead in three states, including seven in Florida and 11 in Georgia.