Hurricane Helene Now a Major Category 4 Storm Surging Toward Florida

Hurricane Helene has been upgraded to a Category 4 storm before making landfall in Florida late on Thursday, Sept. 26. 

Originally a tropical storm, Helene became a Category 4 hurricane on Thursday and is expected to bring “life-threatening storm surge, damaging winds and flooding rains” to a large portion of Florida and southeastern parts of the U.S., the National Hurricane Center announced. 

The storm's sustained winds have now grown stronger than 120 miles per hour, according to AccuWeather.

The site says the storm is expected to make landfall between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m. Thursday night near the city of St. Marks, Fla., in the Panhandle on the state's northwestern coast.

“Devastating hurricane-force winds are expected across portions of northern Florida and southern Georgia where the core of Helene moves inland,” the NHC said in its alert. “Preparations to protect life and property should be completed.”

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Additionally, Helene is forecasted to possibly contribute to life-threatening flash flooding and urban flooding across parts of northwestern and northern Florida, the Southeast, the southern Appalachians and the upper Tennessee Valley starting on Sept. 26 through Friday, Sept. 27, the advisory continued. 

"Helene stands toe-to-toe with any of the threats that Florida has faced over the past 10 years or indeed really over hurricane history," Ryan Truchelut, a hurricane forecaster for the USA Today Network-Florida, told the newspaper. 

Ahead of the impending storm in his state, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis issued a state of emergency for 41 counties on Monday, Sept. 24.

“There have been local communities and counties that have issued evacuation orders in a number of Florida counties, you still have time to be able to do that and so I would heed those warnings,” the governor said, per NBC affiliate WFLA. “You can hide from the wind, and there will be significant wind on this storm, but you have to run from the water.”

DeSantis said in a Sept. 24 X post (formerly known as Twitter) that the state has almost 18,000 linemen staged along with available search and rescue and roadway clearing crews.

President Joe Biden earlier declared a state of emergency for Florida on Sept. 24, ordering “Federal assistance to supplement State, tribal, and local response efforts due to the emergency conditions resulting from Tropical Storm Helene beginning on September 23, 2024, and continuing.”