Hurricane Helene slams Into Florida leaving at least four dead, millions without power
Last night just after 11 p.m., fast-moving Hurricane Helene slammed into the Florida panhandle as a Category 4 storm with sustained140 mph winds – making landfall near the town of Perry in the Florida Big Bend area, leaving destruction and flooding in its wake. Perry is located about 50 miles Florida’s capital of Tallahassee.
As of Friday morning, the destructive Helene has claimed at least four lives.
In Charlotte, North Carolina, one person was killed and another was injured when a tree fell on a house, according to the Mecklenburg EMS Agency.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said he and his family were “saddened to learn of the loss of two lives in Wheeler County” on Thursday night. “As we join their families in mourning their deaths, we urge all Georgians to brace for further impact from Helene, remain vigilant and pray for all those affected,” he said.
In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis said Thursday that one person was killed on the I-4 highway near Tampa when a sign fell on a car. ~ ABC News
This morning, the monster storm was downgraded to a Category 1 hurricane, and then further downgraded into a strong tropical storm as it roared into the Atlanta, Georgia, area – even as it left millions without electricity in the Southeast U.S.
After 6:30 a.m. Friday morning, there were nearly 1.2 million people still without power in Florida alone, according to The Tallahassee Democrat.
As Helene makes its way north, Georgia and the Carolinas are being hit with flooding rains with 10 inches of slamming precipitation already in North Carolina with an addition 14 more inches possible, according to The Associated Press, which warns that the rains are “setting the stage for flooding that forecasters warned could be worse than anything seen in the past century.”
As of this writing, Helene is still tracking over Georgia and the Carolinas and is expected to continue to move north and eventually lose much of its force as if slows down over the Tennessee Valley later today, according to the National Hurricane Center.
For more on this historic and devastating storm, see the video below.
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Posted by Richard Webster, Ace News Today
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