Helene strengthened into a hurricane Wednesday, and forecasters warned that the storm would intensify as it crosses the Gulf of Mexico on a path to Florida. The storm had already prompted residents to evacuate, schools to close and officials to declare emergencies in Florida and Georgia.
The hurricane was about 500 miles (810 kilometers) southwest of Tampa, Florida, and had sustained winds of 80 mph (130 kph), according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center. Forecasters said it is expected to become a major hurricane with its center making landfall in the Big Bend area of Florida's northwestern coast as soon as late Thursday.
The center has issued hurricane warnings for part of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula and Florida’s northwestern coastline, where large storm surges of up to 15 feet (4.5 meters) were expected.
Meanwhile, former Hurricane John re-formed as a tropical storm and threatened areas of Mexico's western coast anew.
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Tampa International Airport in Florida will suspend operations early Thursday ahead of when Hurricane Helene is expected to make landfall in the U.S.
The airport said in a statement Wednesday that “all commercial and cargo operations beginning at 2 a.m.” would be suspended, with the airport remaining closed to the public until any damage can be assessed. Additionally, it said three other public airports managed by the Hillsborough County Aviation Authority — Peter O. Knight, Tampa Executive and Plant City — would close at the same time.
The airport advised travelers to contact their airlines for more information and noted that the airport “will not be open for public use and is not equipped to function as a shelter for people or vehicles.”
Concerns deepened Wednesday afternoon that Helene’s hurricane-force winds could be felt far inland when the storm is forecast to move rapidly northward into southern Georgia after striking Florida.
More than 30 counties in southern Georgia were under a hurricane warning from the National Weather Service on Wednesday, including some rural areas roughly 100 miles north of the Georgia-Florida line.
The hurricane warning area for Georgia included Albany, southwest Georgia’s largest city with a population of 67,000, as well as Valdosta, home to 55,000 along Interstate 75. Helene approached barely a year after Valdosta and surrounding Lowndes County took a beating from Hurricane Idalia, which damaged more than 1,000 homes and inflicted more than $6 million in damage.
Oyster farmer Cainnon Gregg is spending Wednesday in a wetsuit, sinking his floating cages full of oysters to the bottom of Oyster Bay near Spring Creek, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of Tallahassee. It’s an attempt to keep his prized bivalves and the specialized aquaculture equipment that houses them from being blown apart by Hurricane Helene.
“Lord willing, the oysters will survive. But the main goal is to keep the equipment,” Gregg said. “If you lose your equipment, most of us can’t afford $50,000, $100,000 to start over.”
Gregg is part of a coalition of oyster farmers along what’s known as Florida’s Forgotten Coast, a largely undeveloped stretch of the state where for generations commercial fishing has been an industry and a way of life.
Gregg said he hopes to harvest one last truckload of his signature Salty Birds and Big Gulp oysters — banking on one final paycheck before Helene does its worst.
“I was sitting here yesterday after we got done working and we were drinking a beer before we left. And I was looking around and I was like, ‘man, this might be the last time we sit here’,” Gregg said. “There’s a good chance that we come back and it’s not here.”
Ahead of Hurricane Helene’s arrival in Florida, at least 24 counties in the state were under an evacuation order by midday Wednesday, according to the state Division of Emergency Management.
While some orders were voluntary, others were mandatory — applying in part or entirely to a given county. Some orders also specifically applied to individuals in one of at least evacuation zones: A, B or C.
Florida residents looking for more information about evacuation zones and evacuation orders in their area can visit the division's website.
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper declared a State of Emergency ahead of Hurricane Helene on Wednesday as the state prepares for severe weather impacts that could threaten life and property across North Carolina through Saturday morning.
“Helene threatens heavy rain, flash flooding, landslides, and damaging winds to the mountains and Piedmont areas of our state,” Cooper said. “Now is the time for North Carolinians to prepare, make sure emergency kits are up-to-date and pay attention to the weather alerts in your area.”
The State Emergency Response Team is deploying equipment, personnel and resources to support impacted communities, including resources from the North Carolina National Guard.
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Paulette and Ben McLin are going to be spending the storm in their Tallahassee home, but Ben McLin said they are worried about whether their summer home in Alligator Point will still be intact after Helene blows through.
Ben McLin said that they’ve owned the home since 1963 and as a Tallahassee native, he’s no stranger to storms.
“You know, Kate was the worst one we went through and it was a Category 1,” he said. “We got a Category 3 now, so we’re certainly worried about the intensity of this one.”
He said they prepared the house with shutters, but said they’ve done all they can to prepare. Now, the couple has their fingers crossed that it’ll be fine.
In the mountains of North Carolina, Georgia and South Carolina, emergency officials are warning of potentially catastrophic flooding from back-to-back blows of heavy rain.
The National Weather Service is predicting up to 15 inches (38 centimeters) could fall over the next three days — first from a front over the region and then from Helene itself as the storm rushes through.
The impact could be similar to Tropical Storm Fred in 2021, when a heavy rain event just before combined with the tropical storm rains to cause floods that killed six people and damaged close to 1,000 homes and two dozen bridges.
“We’re three years out from that major flood. It’s very fresh in our minds,” Haywood County Emergency Services spokesperson Allison Richmond said.
Haywood County was hard hit in part because the extent of the 2021 flood wasn’t apparent until just before it struck. The county has added several river and stream gauges upstream in the higher ground of the county to have longer warnings and more precise data on the severity of any flooding, Richmond said.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — As residents of Florida’s Big Bend batten down their homes ahead of Hurricane Helene’s expected landfall, the memories of Hurricane Michael in 2018 are fresh on the minds of many. That storm rapidly intensified before crashing ashore as a Category 5 that laid waste to Panama City and parts of the rural Florida Panhandle.
“I don’t think there’s this lackadaisical attitude where … ‘It’ll be fine, it’s only a Cat 3.’ Well, a Cat 3 can escalate to a Cat 5 pretty quickly,” said Kristin Korinko, a Tallahassee resident and the commodore of the Shell Point Sailboard Club, which sits on the Gulf Coast in Wakulla County, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) south of the state capital.
Korinko said most of her friends on the coast are following Wakulla’s countywide mandatory evacuation order issued by local officials. The county isn’t opening any emergency shelters.
“People are taking heed and hightailing it out of there for higher ground,” Korinko said.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Pitmaster Edwin Barcus of E&J’s BBQ on Tallahassee’s south side wasn’t letting Hurricane Helene get in the way of him serving up plates of barbecue ribs and chicken on Wednesday.
“Rain or shine, it’s barbecue time,” Barcus said.
Smoke billowed off the smoldering pecan and cherry wood in Barcus’ twin smokers. While other Tallahassee residents were filling up on gas and securing their homes, Barcus was tending his racks of pork ribs — the first batch of which he got on the smoker around 5 a.m.
He intends to keep serving customers until about 4:30 Wednesday afternoon, regardless of the ferocious storm charting a collision course with the Florida Panhandle.
“Sometimes peoples’ lights go out early. So I try to come early to help the community out so they won’t have to worry about eating,” Barcus said. “I always try to give something back.”
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Roommates Frank Pinkney and Kameron Benjamin were filling up sandbags Wednesday at a community center in Tallahassee to protect their apartment.
The 19-year-old at Florida A&M students planned to evacuate after they were done.
“It’s different with this storm,” Benjamin said. “I’m from South Florida so we get a lot of hurricanes but they usually go through islands before it gets to us. But this hurricane is heading straight to Tallahassee, so I really don’t know what to expect.
“I hope that it kind of just blows over and it’s not as intense as it is being made to seem.”
Like his roommate, Pinkney said he hoped the storm didn’t tear up Tallahassee.
“I hope when we come back our house is still the same as it was, as we left it. But not really nervous, just cautious about what is going on around us.”
MIAMI — In the Pacific, former Hurricane John re-formed as a tropical storm Wednesday and threatened areas of Mexico's western coast anew. John had hit the country's southern Pacific coast late Monday, killing two people, blowing tin roofs off houses, triggering mudslides and toppling scores of trees, officials said Tuesday.
It grew into a Category 3 hurricane in a matter of hours and made landfall about 80 miles (128 kilometers) east of the resort city of Acapulco. It weakened to a tropical storm after moving inland but later reemerged over the ocean.
On Wednesday, officials issued a hurricane watch for the coast from Acapulco to Zihuatanejo and tropical storm warnings from Punta Maldonado to Lazaro Cardenas. John was about 110 miles (180 kilometers) southwest of Acapulco with maximum sustained winds of 40 mph (65 kph) and was moving east at 2 mph (4 kph).
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis warned residents they needed to make their final preparations on Wednesday ahead of Hurricane Helene making landfall in the Panhandle as anywhere from a Category 1 to Category 4 hurricane in the next day or two.
The governor urged coastal communities to heed evacuation orders, saying residents don’t need to drive hundreds of miles away from their homes but just find higher ground at a shelter, hotel or friend’s house.
“The models vary on how intense this could be, but there’s clearly a pathway for this to rapidly intensify prior to making landfall,” DeSantis said at a news conference in Tampa.
As of early Wednesday, 61 out of 67 counties in Florida were under a state of emergency, and another three counties were under a warning or watch, with landfall expected Thursday evening in northern Florida, DeSantis said.
Impacts may be felt as far as 250 miles (402.34 kilometers) from the center of the storm, and some outer bands already were being felt in the Florida Keys Wednesday morning, said Kevin Guthrie, director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management.
MIAMI — Helene strengthened into a hurricane Wednesday, and forecasters warned that the storm would intensify as it crosses the Gulf of Mexico on a path to Florida.
The hurricane was about 500 miles (810 kilometers) southwest of Tampa, Florida, and had sustained winds of 80 mph (130 kph), according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center. Forecasters said it is expected to become a major hurricane with its center making landfall in the Big Bend area of Florida’s northwestern coast as soon as late Thursday.
Helene became a tropical storm Tuesday in the western Caribbean Sea and caused flooding in the Cayman Islands.
Heavy rainfall was forecast for the southeastern U.S. starting Wednesday, with a life-threatening storm surge along the entire west coast of Florida, according to the hurricane center.
Several counties on Florida’s west and northwestern coasts have issued evacuation orders as Tropical Storm Helene makes its way along Mexico’s coast toward the U.S. Multiple school districts, including in the areas around Tampa and the state capital Tallahassee, plan to close schools or reduce hours starting Wednesday.
The University of Tampa also issued a mandatory campus evacuation order Wednesday morning. The school said in a post on the social platform X that “residence halls will be closed after the evacuation concludes, and there will be no entry allowed into residential buildings until they are reopened following the storm.” The evacuation order goes into effect at 1 p.m.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — With Tropical Storm Helene moving north along Mexico’s coast toward the U.S., gas stations in the Tallahassee area were already starting to run out of gas on Monday, and supermarket shelves were being emptied of water and other supplies. Florida State and Florida A&M universities were shut down ahead of the storm and government offices were closing as of Wednesday afternoon.
About 80 percent of the region was without power after Hurricane Hermine in 2016, a Category 1 storm, and it took more than a week to restore electricity for many customers.
Known for its large oak trees and canopy roads, Tallahassee is still recovering from tornadoes that slammed through the heart of the city in May, damaging homes and businesses and destroying scores of trees. The storms caused extensive damage in the city’s beloved Railroad Square district of art studios and offbeat shops.
CRAWFORD, Fla. — Will Marx stopped at the hardware store before hunkering down Wednesday in his double-wide trailer 13 miles (20.92 kilometers) inland in Crawfordville, Florida. He said people were stocking up on gas and tarps.
Marx, a 64-year-old retiree, figured he was as ready as he could be. He had extra water and a charged phone, and moved his vehicle away from trees that might fall in high winds.
“We will know tomorrow I guess,” he said.
He said he lived in New England before moving to Florida.
“If you don’t like snow, I guess it ain’t a good place to live and you have to be prepared for it. It is just a different mindset down here — you have to be prepared. But I guess it’s like anywhere in this country, whether it be twisters or earthquakes. You know, you don’t get it totally without some risk.”
ORLANDO, Fla. — Because Helene is such a fast-moving storm, it won’t dump as much rain on Florida as past hurricanes have done, but its winds may impact places as far inland as northern Georgia, Brian McNoldy, a senior research associate at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science, said Wednesday.
“You are going to see destructive winds not only in Tallahassee but in Atlanta,” McNoldy said. “You are going to have a major hurricane plowing inland, and storms take a little time to decay once they’re inland.”
The models are showing a big wind field, which is why 64 out of 67 counties are under either an emergency order, a watch or warning, he said.
“That this is going to be a large and strong storm,” McNoldy said. ”It is going to be moving very quickly.”
HAVANA — In western Cuba, authorities moved cattle to higher ground and took measures to protect tobacco leaves as fishermen pulled boats to dry land. Seven medical brigades were dispatched to communities usually cut off by storms.
Tropical Storm Helene was expected to dump heavy rain on the western part of an island already struggling with severe water shortages and chronic power outages.
MEXICO CITY — Tropical Storm Helene was pelting Mexico’s Caribbean coast resorts from Cozumel to Cancun with rain, high waves and strong winds early Wednesday.
Mara Lezama, the governor of the coastal state of Quintana Roo, shared photos of downed trees and rain-swept streets, and videos of the normally placid, turquoise waters off the island of Cozumel being whipped into angry waves that broke over the seawall of the coastal boulevard.
In Cancun, heavy waves threatened to worsen the resort’s ongoing problem with beach erosion.
VALDOSTA, Ga. — Forecasters warned that Tropical Storm Helene’s hurricane-force winds could spread damage far inland as the storm races northward from the Gulf Coast. Fifteen counties in southern Georgia were under a hurricane warning Wednesday, including some rural areas roughly 90 miles (144.84 kilometers) north of the Georgia-Florida line.
The hurricane warning area for Georgia included Valdosta, a city of 55,000 along Interstate 75. Helene approached barely a year after Valdosta and surrounding Lowndes County took a beating from Hurricane Idalia, which damaged more than 1,000 homes and inflicted more than $6 million in damage.
Helene is the eighth named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, which began June 1.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has predicted an above-average Atlantic hurricane season this year because of record-warm ocean temperatures. It forecast 17 to 25 named storms before the season ends Nov. 30, with four to seven major hurricanes of Category 3 or higher.
President Joe Biden declared an emergency in Florida and deployed Federal Emergency Management Agency teams to Florida and Alabama to support local first responders. Federal authorities were positioning generators, food and water, along with search-and-rescue and power restoration teams, the White House said.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis also issued an emergency for most of the state’s counties, while Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp declared an emergency in his state as well.
Forecasters warned of the possibility of tornadoes Wednesday night over parts of the western Florida peninsula and southern Alabama and said the tornado risk would increase Thursday, expanding across Florida and into parts of Georgia and South Carolina.
The National Weather Service says tropical storm warnings are in effect for:
— The upper Florida Keys
— The southern Florida Peninsula
— The northeast coast of Florida
— Altamaha Sound, Georgia
Hurricane watches, which are a step down from warnings, are also in effect for parts of western Cuba and Florida, including the Tampa Bay area.
A tropical storm watch is in effect for the South Carolina coast north of the Savannah River to the South Santee River.
An 8 a.m. ET forecast from the National Weather Service showed Helene was located about 60 miles (100 kilometers) east-northeast of Cozumel, Mexico, and about 100 miles (160 kilometers) west-southwest of the western tip of Cuba as it moved northwest at 9 mph (15 kph) with maximum sustained winds of 70 mph (110 kph).
Tropical Storm Helene is rapidly strengthening in the Caribbean Sea and is expected to become a hurricane Wednesday while moving north along Mexico's coast toward the U.S., prompting residents to evacuate, schools to close and officials to declare emergencies in Florida and Georgia.
The storm is forecast to be "near hurricane strength" when it passes near Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula early Wednesday, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said, and to "intensify and grow in size" as it moves north across the Gulf of Mexico. Heavy rainfall was forecast for the southeastern U.S. starting Wednesday, with a "life-threatening storm surge" along the entire west coast of Florida, according to the center.
Helene is expected to become a major hurricane — a Category 3 or higher — on Thursday, the day it’s set to reach Florida’s Gulf Coast, according to the hurricane center. The center has issued hurricane warnings for part of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula and Florida’s northwestern coastline, where large storm surges of up to 15 feet (4.5 meters) were expected.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center has issued hurricane warnings for northwestern Florida’s coastline and part of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula as Tropical Storm Helene approaches the area.
Helene is expected to strengthen into a hurricane Wednesday and could become a major hurricane Thursday.
Areas of western Cuba and Florida, including Tampa Bay, were under hurricane watches Tuesday evening. A tropical storm warning was issued for parts of Cuba and Florida’s southwestern coastline, including the Florida Keys.
A storm surge warning was in effect for Florida’s Tampa Bay, Charlotte Harbor, and from Indian Pass south to Flamingo. Florida and Georgia’s eastern coasts, from Palm Beach to the Savannah River, were under a tropical storm watch.