Helene bears down on Florida coast as a major hurricane

A mostly empty Dekle Beach, a small coastal community, near Keaton Beach, Fla., ahead of Hurricane Helene on Thursday morning, Sept. 26, 2024. (Paul Ratje/The New York Times)

By Patricia Mazzei, Isabelle Taft, Abigail Geiger and Judson Jones

The pounding rain now flooding cities in Hurricane Helene’s wide path portended record-breaking storm surge on the Big Bend coast of Florida later Thursday, forecasters said. Officials urged residents to flee before rising water, which they said could reach the height of a two-story building, swept over cars, homes and streets.

Rainfall before the storm, now a Category 3 hurricane with 120-mph winds, was outperforming forecasters’ expectations, which they said meant escalating potential for flooding throughout the Southeast. On the Florida coastline where Helene will come ashore, the surge could rise 15 to 20 feet above normal tide levels.

Here’s a look at the latest:

— Size and strength: Record-setting ocean temperatures are acting like “high-octane jet fuel” for the intensifying storm, one researcher said, and excessive rain warnings included Atlanta and Asheville, North Carolina. States of emergency have been declared as far north as Virginia, and schools canceled classes for Friday across the Southeast.

— More evacuees: Some longtime residents of coastal Florida, seasoned hurricane veterans who said they had never before evacuated, were leaving home Thursday, faced with Helene’s size and strength. John Posey, 58, had never left because of a hurricane, he said — not for Dennis in 2005, nor for Michael in 2018. But Helene, he said, felt different, and he wasn’t sure he should stay.

— Staying put: Despite the warnings, some coastal residents accepted the risks of riding out the storm. In tiny Cedar Key, Florida, which was hammered by Hurricane Idalia last August, about 50 residents remained. Michael Bobbitt, a novelist among the holdouts, said worry had given way to calm: “There’s a resignation here, now.”

— A rush to harvest: Southern farmers scrambled to salvage unharvested crops before wind and floods destroyed them. Most of the $400 million pecan crop in Georgia is in the southern part of the state, placing it in the direct path of the storm.