Hurricane Helene threatening Florida with flooding rain and winds

AccuWeather

As Florida continues to prepare for Hurricane Helene, the storm continues to strengthen. Helene is expected to make landfall as a Category 3 storm, bringing flooding rain and storm surge.

Transcript

00:00Dan, you were part of the decision that occurred later on, earlier today, late this morning,

00:08that for the AccuWeather Real Impact Scale, we were going to bump this up from a three

00:14to a four.

00:15We'll get into that in a second, but let's take a look at the impacts here, and you can

00:19see it's a very large area of high and a couple areas of extreme impacts.

00:24Yeah, Bernie, and one of the reasons that we made that decision, our forecasting team

00:28here at AccuWeather made the decision to go with a real impact of four for Helene is not

00:33just for the significant impacts at landfall, which can range from the 15 to 20 foot storm

00:39surge, obviously the 130 mile an hour winds, but also the inland risks with Helene that

00:44are pretty unusual for, and don't occur with most tropical systems.

00:49In this case, we're talking about the potential for widespread, significant, and in some places

00:53catastrophic flooding, and inland wind damage that can cause power outages across a lot

00:58of Georgia and Western South Carolina and North Carolina that could last for days or

01:02even perhaps weeks in a few spots.

01:04Yeah, and it's that word, catastrophic damage and long-lasting damage.

01:10That was the reason that we decided to go in that direction.

01:14You can see all of the bullet points here that you had just mentioned from catastrophic

01:18flooding and also the widespread long-lasting power outages.

01:22All right, Dan, let's break it down.

01:24Let's get to the rain first because even tonight, well in advance of Helene, we've been talking

01:31about this heavy rain band setting up since yesterday afternoon from North Carolina in

01:37the North Georgia.

01:38Yeah, this rain is going to occur ahead of the main circulation of Helene and obviously

01:42Helene is going to bring about eight inches of rain in many places, but anytime you get

01:46several inches of rain, in this case could be four, five, six inches of rain tonight

01:49in parts of the Southern Appalachians, you've already wet the ground there and you may have

01:53some flooding tonight, so that's something to be concerned of.

01:56And then there may be a brief break where the rain lets up a bit tomorrow, Thursday

01:59during the day, then it will return with a vengeance on Thursday night as the circulation

02:04for Helene makes landfall and throws all of that tropical moisture, in some cases record

02:08moisture levels here for September, being thrown up against the mountains and anytime

02:12you have moisture being forced upward, you squeeze out a lot of that moisture really

02:16rapidly and that's why we expect two to three inch per hour rain rates and that's going

02:20to cause widespread flooding.

02:22That could be a flooding disaster for some communities in the Southern Appalachians on

02:25Thursday night into early Friday.

02:27And then I found it kind of frightening here, we have just as much rain predicted with landfall

02:33in the Big Bend of Florida, just as much as what we're looking at here from Western North

02:38Carolina to North Georgia.

02:40We do, and anytime, especially in the mountains, it only takes four inches of rain in some

02:45places to fall in a short amount of time, in this case we're talking double that or

02:49even triple that.

02:50It could be up to a foot of rain and that's going to cause significant flooding that could

02:54cause roads to wash out and some communities to be inaccessible for several days.

02:59The other concern we have is the wind, there's that extreme flood risk that you were just

03:03talking about, that is an area that we could see life-threatening flash flooding, also

03:08power outages as well.

03:10Most intense rainfall, although there will be some tonight, will be tomorrow as well.

03:15This is the other thing we want to get across down here quickly.

03:18Look at these winds, 60 to 80 mile per hour winds across much of eastern parts of Georgia.

03:24Yeah, it's the combination here of the wind risk along with the flood risk that in parts

03:29of eastern northern Georgia as well as western north and south Carolina that in some of those

03:32areas this could be really remembered as a once in a generation storm.

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