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
Breaking news and good evening. I m erin burnett outfront tonight. The breaking news unsurvivable. That is the exact word officials are using right now, as hurricane helene has now grown to an extremely dangerous category four hurricane, bringing with it potentially really historic storm surge levels right now expected at 20 feet. Let s just look at the scene right now is a live camera that we have in met lots of florida trees right there right now, you ve got up to 130 an hour gusts coming through that area on that bridge. We have seen cars coming and going really even in these past few moments, which is pretty stunning. Many bridges have already been closed. This is the skyway bridge, as you re looking here, which is now completely submerged. Imagine being in one of those cars. And right now, darkness is descending on the area more than 200,000 people in the dark without power right now, there is a sheriff asking people who do not evacuate to write their name and date of birth on the
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
Already begun in Southwest Florida. The impacts were not that significant, where the storm has already passed, fdot crews have already driven and cleared more than 2000 miles of roadway in Southwest Florida so weve already started working once the initial initial response is through our cut and tell us crews were transition to Debris Removal. And undergoing are two sentences, leadership, we will stand ready just like with the Dahlia And Debbie to support fiscally constrained counties with the Debris Removal operation please leave dr. Please do not drive on them water over a road can be very dangerous, especially around culverts and bridges. Every storm season, we see people tried to navigate through water. You have no idea whats Going On underneath the water, please do not drive through but were going to stay in touch with our airports and Seaports Sea ports are closed, Water Side right now airports are going to reopen just as soon as practically feasible and thank again, governor. Tha
It states Hurricane Helene was just upgraded. A powerful category three storm. Its already wreaking havoc on bridges and roadways such as this one youre looking at in Southwest Florida for those in the Big Bend, thats where the Florida Panhandle meets the peninsula. The storms Outer Bands all already have brought extensive flooding. And were told that works is yet to come. Listen to what federal and state officials are saying right now, it looks like its dead on hit to tallahassee. This is an unusually dangerous storm that threatens to bring Heavy Rain and potentially catastrophic flooding. This will be a statewide event. We expect strong winds throughout date with hurricaneforce Winds Wind Gust up to 8,200 miles an hour you just heard from the North Carolina Governor and the Georgia Governor we are standing by to hear from florida governor Ron Desantis in the next hour. And as you heard, it is not just florida in helenes pam, georgia, south carolina, North Carolina, are all all facing