Hurricane Helene may hit Florida as a 'catastrophic' Category 4 storm
- Hurricane Helene is forecast to rapidly strengthen and could hit Florida on Thursday as a Category 4 storm, producing"catastrophic" winds of up to 156 miles per hour , forecasters said.
Storm surge, the wall of seawater pushed on land by hurricane-force winds, was upgraded to 15 to 20 feet in the Big Bend area of Florida's panhandle where the storm is expected to come ashore, Rhome said. With weather reports playing on her television in the background, Melissa Wolcott-Martino, a retired magazine editor in St. Petersburg, was busy packing on Wednesday before evacuating her one-story coastal home and heading for higher ground.
Pinellas County officials ordered evacuations of long-term healthcare facilities, including nursing homes, assisted living centers and hospitals near the coast. The county sits on a peninsula surrounded by Tampa Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. Rhome of the hurricane center said about half of lives lost in hurricanes typically came from flash flooding caused by torrential rain, often among people who drive into flooded roads and are swept away. He urged those in affected areas to use extreme caution.
Residents in the potential path are being told to prepare to be without power for up to a week, Florida emergency officials said in a briefing.
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