Helene hasn't been named yet, but where could it make landfall?

The tropical rainstorm that forecasters are expecting to strengthen into Hurricane Helene is heading for the Gulf Coast, but where exactly?

Transcript

00:00It's still a tropical rainstorm. It will remain again a bit disheveled for another 12 hours or so,

00:06gradually strengthening and becoming more organized as it enters the eastern Gulf of

00:11Mexico. So let's take a look at this through another lens here. This is the zone of

00:15really abundant moisture, a growing area of thunderstorms drifting north. There's not much

00:20moisture in the Gulf of Mexico at the moment, but this storm is going to import its own moisture.

00:24Other ingredients, we have plenty of warm water, 85, 86 degrees out there,

00:29not much wind shear. You can see we're on the lighter end of the scale there, so

00:33the Gulf of Mexico is open for development and rapid intensification. The eastern part of this

00:39is where we're going to see our problems here, and there's not much wind shear out there.

00:42If this interior low over the southern plains and the Ozarks stalls and stays west, and if this

00:48strong ridge of high pressure off the southeast coast remains strong, well, this system could

00:52come farther west. If the opposite takes place and the ridge of high pressure breaks down,

00:57weakens, moves farther east, and the trough kicks farther east a little faster, then that will draw

01:03the storm farther to the east. Those are the players on the field. The most likely scenario

01:07is between those two outcomes, looking at landfall probably near or just east of Port St. Joe and

01:13Apalachicola around 5 p.m. Thursday as a major hurricane. In the meantime, we're going to go

01:18from tropical rainstorm to tropical storm to hurricane over just 48 hours and probably a

01:23strengthening Category 2 hurricane in that short time. Three to six foot storm surge is likely into

01:28the western part of Cuba, and again, we're very concerned about landfall 5 p.m. Thursday as a

01:33Category 3 hurricane, a major hurricane with a huge storm surge of 10 to 15 feet as the ocean water

01:40is driven inland by the east side of the storm circulation in that concave part of the coastline,

01:47along with gusts of wind 140 plus miles per hour in the eastern eyewall, a lot of power outages out

01:53there, and also 8 to 12 inches of rain for some, not just near the coast, but also into the east

01:59facing slopes of the southern Appalachians, and then also 8 to 12 inches of rain in many other

02:04areas, including into the Ozark Plateau as the storm meanders inland.