Featured Article: Impact of Hurricane Helene

Hurricane Helene made landfall Thursday night in northwestern Florida as a powerful Category 4 storm, with forecasters warning of a potentially catastrophic storm surge and hazardous winds and rain across the southeastern U.S.

The National Hurricane Center in Miami reported that Helene came ashore around 11:10 p.m. EDT near the mouth of the Aucilla River, in the Big Bend region of Florida’s Gulf Coast. Packing maximum sustained winds of 140 mph (225 kph), the storm hit just 20 miles northwest of where Hurricane Idalia made landfall last year, causing significant damage at similar intensity.

Hurricane and flash flood warnings were issued well inland, extending into northern Georgia and western North Carolina. Over a million homes and businesses in Florida lost power, with an additional 50,000 outages in Georgia, according to poweroutage.us. Governors in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, the Carolinas, and Virginia declared states of emergency in response to the storm.