By Rich McKay, Brendan O’Brien and Andrew Hay
(Reuters) – Hurricane Helene is expected to strengthen quickly and could hit Florida on Thursday as a Category 4 storm, with “catastrophic” winds of up to 155 miles per hour, forecasters said.
Helene entered the Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday and was expected to gain strength from the gulf’s warm waters before making landfall in the Florida panhandle on Thursday evening.
“For those along the path, this unfortunately means catastrophic wind impacts,” Jamie Rhome, deputy director of the National Hurricane Center, said of the forecast strength increase to Category 4 with sustained winds of 125 to 155 miles per hour.
Storm surge, the wall of seawater pushed ashore by hurricane-force winds, was upgraded to 15 to 20 feet (4.6 to 6.1 meters) in the Big Bend area of Florida’s panhandle, where the storm is expected to make landfall , Rhome said.
More than 40 million people in Florida, Georgia and Alabama were under hurricane and tropical storm warnings, the hurricane center said.
Numerous evacuations were ordered along Florida’s Gulf Coast, including Sarasota and Charlotte counties, and dozens of counties announced school closures, including Hillsborough and Pinellas counties.
With weather reports on her television in the background, Melissa Wolcott-Martino, a retired magazine editor in St. Petersburg, was busy packing Wednesday before evacuating her one-story coastal home and heading for higher ground.
Hours earlier, she finally finished repairing damage from last year’s Hurricane Idalia, which lashed the low-lying area with powerful winds and devastating flooding.
“Last year we had Idalia,” the 81-year-old said in a telephone interview. “We just finished the renovation, put the finishing touches on it today and are now packing for another storm. This isn’t great.”
Pinellas County officials ordered evacuations of long-term health care facilities, including nursing homes, assisted living centers and hospitals near the coast. The county is located on a peninsula surrounded by Tampa Bay and the Gulf of Mexico.
“Now you still have time to prepare, review your hurricane plan and make sure you’re implementing your hurricane preparedness plan,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said during a news conference Tuesday.
Helene, heavy rains hit Cuba overnight, dumping as much as 8 inches (20.3 cm) of water in parts of the western tobacco province of Pinar del Rio in 24 hours, the provincial meteorological service said.
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Helene was expected to dump up to 14 inches (38.1 cm) of rain in some isolated spots after making landfall in Florida, causing significant flooding and urban flooding, the hurricane center said.
Rhome of the hurricane center said about half of the lives lost in hurricanes typically result from flash flooding caused by torrential rains, often among people who drive onto flooded roads and are swept away. He urged the affected areas to exercise extreme caution.
Rhome added that the expected hurricane-force wind impact area extended about 180 miles (290 km) north from the Florida Panhandle to southern Georgia.
“You have to prepare for extended (energy) outages, those trees will fall in high winds and block roads,” Rhome said.
Residents of the potential path are being told to prepare for up to a week without power, Florida emergency officials said in a briefing.
In southwestern Georgia, farmers tried to save their cotton and pecan crops on Wednesday, said Pam Knox, an agricultural climatologist at the University of Georgia in Athens.
Farmers typically have weeks, not days, to bring in crops, Knox said Wednesday.
“This is going to be a billion-dollar disaster,” Knox said.
(This story has been refiled to read Category 4 storm, not Category 3, in the third bullet)
