Households in florida are reportedlyfl without power and thousands have been ordered to evacuate from their thhomes. As you can see from these satellite images, helene is huge and is expected to effect nearly the entire state of florida with damaging winds and heavy rain. Still what mayea bring the most danger areri the Storm Surges. Earlier today residents experienced flooding in places like pine island, which is just outside of fort myers. But flooding will likely get much worse across the state as the night continues. A Storm Surge Warning is in place for almost the entirety of floridas west coast. This video is a simulation of what could happen if the Storm Surge rises to approximately 10 feet. But in some parts of florida officials warn that Hurricane Helene could cause Storm Surges of c up to 20 feet, around doub the amount shown in in simulatiOn And those officials are calling that a level of Sto Surge potentially unsurvivable. Earlier today the first bands of Wind Andt Rain Las
Now i ll see you tomorrow evening. I m kaitlan collins. This is the source hurricane helene is about to slam into florida and i expected to make landfall and just a couple of hours from now, it s now an extremely dangerous category four storm and winds are now up to 140 miles per hour. If it stays this strong, it ll be the strongest storm to ever make landfall in florida s big bend region. That s the area that we re keeping a close eye on. This hour, more than half 1 million people there have already lost power. And forecasters are predicting tonight that the storm surge in some areas could be unsurvivable reaching as high as 20 feet surges and high winds were already the reason for the closures of several major bridges in the tampa area that we saw tonight? officials, there are telling residents to shelter in place, that it is going to get worse and don t go outside. Emergency managers and one florida county are being so blunt with their warnings for those who are in low lying areas a
Cnn breaking news good evening. I m abby phillip in new york. Our special coverage continues tonight of hurricane helene, a monster category four storm that is now moments away from making landfall in florida. At this moment, it was too late now for folks along the coast too evacuate. Officials warned that the winds and the storm surge will be be catastrophic in some areas, the word that they are using is unsurvivable helene could be the strongest storm on record for the big bend region. And we are already starting to see a major surge in these cities. So we have our anchors and our correspondents. They re fanned out as the storm is now hitting and we have chad myers as well with the latest forecast in the cnn weather center. Let s go first to john berman. He s out in tallahassee in the socalled dead on a hit zone, john, what s happening where you are right now? yeah the winds have really started to pick up abby over the last half an hour. The rain really coming down here, you can see
Tallahassee within the next few hours. Now, right now, helene is an extremely dangerous category 4 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 140 miles per hour. So, for more than 545,000 households in florida, they are reportedly without power and thousands have been ordered to evacuate from their homes. As you can see from these satellite images, helene is huge and is expected to affect nearly the entire state of florida with damaging winds and heavy rain. So, what may bring the most danger are the storm surges. Earlier today, residents experienced flooding in places like pine island, which is just outside of fort myers. But, flooding will likely get much worse across the state as the night continues. A storm surge warning is in place for almost the entirety of florida s west coast. This video is a simulation of what could happen if the storm surge rises to approximately 10 feet. But, in some parts of florida, officials look worn that a hurricane helene could cause storm surges of up
Saying yeah, we have a category three hurricane on our hands right now, what 125 mile per hour winds my point that out because it category four hurricane starts at 130 mile per hour winds, so were really talking about a difference of five to ten miles per hour here, right . So right now, its a very Highend Category three teetering on that category four, which is why the national Hurricane Center is saying, hey, look, its still sitting over very warm from Ocean Waters right now. It has all the ingredients it needs to strengthen. So theres really not much to stop it from gaming that five miles per hour that it needs to just get to that category and become a category four either way, whether its this Highend Category three, or it makes that fivemile per Hour Difference to a category four. We are still talking about the Sam Catastrophic on survivable impacts when it comes to the Storm Surge and heavy Rain And Everything else. Weve been talking about, the radar. You can see again still with