Helene slams Florida as Category 4 hurricane then rapidly weakens as it moves inland; nearly 4 million without power

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 8 a.m. EDT, Helene was approximately 35 miles south-southwest of Clemson, Georgia, and 80 miles east-northeast of Atlanta and was racing north at 30 mph, the Miami-based hurricane center said. It was packing maximum sustained winds of 60 mph.

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.  

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

About a million customers in Georgia, 1.2 million more in South Carolina and over 479,000 in North Carolina had no electricity. Those numbers were growing rapidly.

What's more, over 29,000 homes and businesses had no power in Virginia, for a total of nearly 4 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.  

The impact

CBS News Miami noted that when it reached land, Helene aimed squarely at the sparsely populated Big Bend area, home to fishing villages and vacation hideaways where Florida's Panhandle and peninsula meet. Shuttered gas stations dotted the two-lane highway, their windows boarded up with plywood.

Last August, Hurricane Idalia, a Category 4 storm with maximum sustained winds of 130 mph, generated a record-breaking storm surge from Tampa to the Big Bend. This August, Hurricane Debby also hit the area.

Miami-Dade Fire Rescue's Urban Search and Rescue team members are currently staging in Ocala, which is inland from Big Bend.

This stretch of Florida known as the Forgotten Coast has been largely spared by the widespread condo development and commercialization that dominates so many of Florida's beach communities. The region is loved for its natural wonders — the vast stretches of salt marshes, tidal pools and barrier islands; the dwarf cypress trees of Tate's Hell State Forest; and Wakulla Springs, considered one of the world's largest and deepest freshwater springs.

More than 175 people were sheltering in a school in Tallahassee.

Annie Sloan, who was one of them, told CBS News Miami:  "I decided to come to the shelter because I live alone and basically my son came to take me to Georgia, but we discovered the hurricane was going to Georgia also, and I decided to just come here and shelter because my husband passed, and I don't want to be home alone."

Many, though, 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.

Most gas stations in the Tallahassee area were shut down or out of gas.

School districts and numerous universities called off classes for Friday.

The outlook

"A turn toward the north is expected this morning, taking the center over central and northeastern Georgia. After that, Helene is expected to turn northwestward and slow down over the Tennessee Valley later today and Saturday," the hurricane center reported. "Continued weakening is expected, and Helene is expected to become a post-tropical low this afternoon or tonight.

"However, the fast forward speed will allow strong, damaging winds, especially in gusts, to penetrate well inland across the southeastern United States, including over the higher terrain of the southern Appalachians."

The center also said that, "Over portions of the Southeastern U.S. into the Southern Appalachians, Helene is expected to produce total rain accumulations of 6 to 12 inches, with isolated totals around 20 inches. This rainfall will likely result in catastrophic and potentially life-threatening flash and urban flooding, along with significant and record river flooding. Numerous significant landslides are expected in steep terrain across the southern Appalachians."

The Weather Channel's Abrams said, "We've already seen double-digit rainfall in western North Carolina and we could still get another half-foot or more. That means there's a risk of catastrophic and life-threatening flash flooding … with the possibility, by the way, of flooding stretching all the way to the Mississippi River. All of this water will cause rivers to rise, some of which could crush their records by several feet."  

CBS News senior weather and climate producer David Parkinson described Helene as a "gargantuan" storm.

Its tropical-storm-force winds were extending outward up to 275 miles from its center, mainly east of that center, the hurricane center said.

NASA shared video of the hurricane as seen from the International Space Station, showing the size of the storm as it churned through the Gulf of Mexico Thursday afternoon.

Forecasters expected the storm surge to reach five-to-ten feet from the Florida's Aucilla River to Chassahowitzka, Florida. Other areas could see anywhere from three-to-seven feet of water, the hurricane center warned.

"The water impacts are probably going to be the most impactful part of the storm, the most deadly part of the storm," Jamie Rhome, a deputy director at the hurricane center, told CBS News.

The possibility of tornadoes remained a concern, with the hurricane center saying they could pop up in parts of eastern Georgia, Friday morning and through the afternoon over the Carolinas and southern Virginia.

President Biden and DeSantis declared emergencies in the state earlier in the week, and evacuation orders were issued in several counties. At the University of Tampa, officials were trying to evacuate all residential students by Wednesday afternoon.

States of emergency were also declared in Georgia, North and South Carolina and as far north as Virginia.

Exceptionally warm Gulf water fuels hurricanes

Record-warm water in the Gulf almost certainly  acted like jet fuel in intensifying the storm. Brian McNoldy, senior research associate at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science, recently noted that ocean heat content in the Gulf of Mexico is the highest on record. Warm water is a necessary ingredient to strengthen tropical systems.

Sea surface temperatures in the path of Helene were as warm as 89 degrees Fahrenheit — 2 to 4 degrees above normal.

These record water temperatures have been made significantly more likely by human-caused climate change, according to Climate Central. The North Atlantic Ocean as a whole has seen record warm temperatures in 2024, storing 90% of the excess heat from climate change produced by greenhouse gas pollution.

Manuel Bojorquez, Aimee Picchi, Dave Malkoff and Li Cohen contributed to this report.

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