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| Projected path of Hurricane Helene today and tonight. That sort of yellow shading is where tropical storm force winds are occurring. These were already starting to brush southwest Florida before dawn. It's going to be a long day in Florida. |
The overall forecast for Hurricane Helene hasn't changed much overnight. As of 4 a.m. top winds with the storm were at 90 mph.
The bottom line is Hurricane Helene is still expected to be a catastrophic major hurricane before and during its landfall in northwest Florida this evening, and continuing on into Friday with likely wild, extremely dangerous flooding and landslides in the southern Appalachians.
Storm surges are still expected to reach 20 feet above normal water levels in parts of coastal northwest Florida.
I hope people have left this area. That kind of storm surge, combined with battering waves and extreme winds, is not survivable.
Helene's forward speed is fast, so destructive winds will extend all the way inland to western North Carolina where a rare tropical storm warning is in effect.
The weather is already kind of rough in much of Florida with rain bands from Helene. Tropical storm force winds were starting to sweep through coastal southwest Florida before dawn today.
The game we're playing today is looking/hoping for ways to blunt Helene's potential power. The more powerful the winds, the more destructive the storm, including its cataclysmic storm surge.
Helene will move over a prime atmosphere to strengthen today. It'll be over record warm water and in a moist environment with little in the way of the type of upper level winds that would inhibit the storm's towering thunderstorms.
That's why it's expected to strengthen quickly.
Two things are sort of working to hopefully prevent Helene from reaching a most serious high end Category 4 or even Category 5. It's moving forward so fast that it will run out of time to keep strengthening before it hits land.
Another interesting thing is its eyewall early this morning, according to the National Hurricane Center. The eyewall is the most intense part of the storm. It's the ring of intense storms that surround the calm eye.
Helene actually had two concentric eyewalls early today. That could temporarily slow its strengthening. No guarantees, but we'll see.
Even if Helene miraculously falls a little short of its forecast strength (don't count on it!), it's simply too late for anything to fall apart to prevent a major, life threatening disaster for swaths of Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas and eastern Tennessee.
OTHER STORMS
Way out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, Tropical Storm Isaac has formed. It's in the middle of nowhere, about a third of the way between North Carolina and Portugal.
It formed kind of far north for a tropical storm, and might even become a hurricane for a time. Eventually, as it heads east or northeast, Isaac will move over colder water and sputter out. It doesn't look like much of a threat to land.
Another disturbance out there, halfway between Africa and the Lesser Antilles, has a very good chance of soon becoming Tropical Storm Joyce. It's too soon to say what, if any effect wannabe Joyce will have on any land areas.
In the eastern Pacific, we have weird Tropical Storm John, soon to be Hurricane John.
It's weird because Hurricane John slammed into Mexico north of Acapulco a few days ago, then dissipated inland. But its remnants moved back over very warm Pacific Ocean water and quickly redeveloped. It's now expected to come ashore again in very roughly the same general area it did before.
The result will be catastrophic flash flooding and mudslides now through the end of the week in the Mexican states of Guerrero, Oaxaca and Michoacan, according to the National Hurricane Center.
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