Friday, September 27

We apologize for publishing this article late due to a scheduling issue.

Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida's Big Bend yesterday as a Category 4 hurricane packing winds of 140 mph and heavy rain, along with over 20 feet of storm surge in some areas.

Helene made landfall east of the original projection but within the cone of its expected track, with the eye of the storm passing over Taylor County at around 11:10 pm last night.

The storm formed as a tropical storm on Tuesday, moving northwest towards Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula, and brushed Cancún before entering the Gulf of Mexico. The system had been an area of interest for possible development for days, and it has finally formed after moving over warm waters. You can read more into the initial development of Helene here.

Helene then rapidly intensified in the Gulf of Mexico, increasing from a Category 1 hurricane with winds of 75 mph to a Category 3 hurricane with winds of 120 mph as it brushed western Florida. The eastern side of the hurricane battered Tampa and St. Petersburg for hours as it approached the Florida Panhandle, bringing storm surge of 6-8 feet to the entire area. As it came closer to the Big Bend, it began to slightly shift east as it continued to intensify, changing its primary target from the state capital of Tallahassee to the smaller town of Perry.

Various watches and warnings were put into place across the region, including river flood warnings in some parts of Florida, flood watches across Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia, hurricane warnings across the Florida Panhandle and southern Georgia, tropical storm warnings across the rest of Florida and Georgia, and more. A state of emergency was also declared in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Alabama by their respective governors before Helene arrived, allowing forces to mobilize and prepare ahead of time so that they can jump straight into action after the storm passes. US President Joe Biden also secured additional funding for Florida to help them recover from the initial severe effects of Helene.

Last night, the system raged onto land as a as a Category 4 hurricane with sustained wind speeds of over 140 mph along with heavy rain, and storm surge was also a massive danger. The record-breaking storm surge reached over 20 feet in some areas, instantly inundating entire islands of homes. Pictures taken from cameras mounted on the roofs of evacuated houses showed water levels just below the location of where the photo was taken, showing the dramatic scale of the storm surge. This, coupled with heavy rain and winds, has knocked out power and wreaked havoc across the entire area. Rivers have also burst their banks due to the heavy rainfall, inundating areas farther inland.

Unfortunately, Helene is striking the exact same area that was devastated by Hurricane Idalia (made landfall as Category 3) last year and was also hit hard by Hurricane Debby (made landfall as Category 1) earlier this year.

Also, the storm did not just affect the area around it-- its impacts stretched far and wide. Helene itself a massive storm, with its outer bands reaching over 100 miles in each direction. Hurricane-force winds only stretched about 20-30 miles outside of the eye, but tropical storm-force winds were felt over 100 miles in all directions. Also, because Helene is a larger storm, that allows it to travel farther inland without weakening as fast as a smaller hurricane. Its size makes Helene worse than Idalia from last year, which was also a major hurricane but much smaller. In fact, Helene's size is relatively similar to the size of the catastrophic Hurricane Irma, which struck eastern Florida as a Category 5 hurricane in 2017.

Trees and power lines were knocked down across the Southeast by Helene's strong winds-- over 1 million people are still out of power in Florida alone, and hundreds of thousands of people lost power in Georgia as well. Several people were also killed by the hurricane, including two people who died when a reported tornado hit their mobile home and another person who died in their car near Tampa after they were crushed by a billboard.

Thousands of Floridians were forced to evacuate ahead of the storm due to the severe conditions arriving with Helene, but many residents refused to leave. Because of this, during the storm, the sheriff's office of Taylor County, where the storm made landfall, told residents that did not evacuate to write their name, birthday, and other important information on their arm or leg so that they could be identified in case of an emergency.

However, the hurricane isn't just impacting Florida. After pummeling the Florida Panhandle, the hurricane rapidly moved into southern Georgia, traveling northward towards the state capital of Atlanta, which is home to around 6 million people. The storm (as of 7 am Eastern Time) is currently pummeling the Atlanta metro area with heavy rain and strong winds of over 65 mph, and it is still forecast to move on into Tennessee and Kentucky, dumping even more rain over the Appalachian Mountains and the Ohio Valley.

Fact of the Day (Reader's Digest): Many countries actually have more than one capital. For example, South Africa has three: Bloemfontein, Pretoria, and Cape Town; Bolivia has two, La Paz and Sucre; and the Netherlands has two: Amsterdam and The Hague.

Quote of the Day (Gracious Quotes): You can love what you see in the mirror, but you can’t self-esteem your way out of the way the world treats you. (Gabrielle Union)

Word of the Day (Merriam-Webster): Deter (verb)- To deter someone is to discourage or prevent them from acting. To deter a thing is to stop or limit it.

In a Sentence: The heavy fines aim to deter people from dumping garbage here.