Experts at CSU see Hurricane Helene bulk up and hit hard

Hurricane Helene made landfall Thursday night driving out of control right into the Florida Gulf Coast.

"This one really has everything. It's really intensified rapidly today, from Category 2 to Category 4," said Dr. Mark DeMaria, a senior research scientist at the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere known as CIRA at Colorado State University.

DeMaria was watching the bulky Helene get ready to storm ashore. At CIRA, scientists track storms and gather reams of data to create intensity models. They predict the probabilities of winds and time of arrival. They generally take a longer view than the scientists now engaged in the urgency of the moment at the National Hurricane Center in Miami, where DeMaria worked for several years as a technology and science branch chief.

"Taking the time in a research environment to try to piece it all together to try to figure out you know how these storms behave and what makes this rapidly intensify," he explained about CIRA's work.

Hurricanes pull their energy from the warm oceans at this time of year.

"The Gulf of Mexico is usually already very warm in September. And this year it's a degree or two warmer than it usually is," he said. In fact global oceans are a degree or two warmer he added, noting there is likely a climate change component.

Helene is a big storm and moving fast. Experts predict it will push a storm surge of Gulf water 15 to 20 feet high ashore in some places. That's as high as a two story building. DeMaria thinks there's a good chance it will still pack near hurricane force winds when it reaches Atlanta. Rarely does that large metropolitan area get winds of that magnitude and it could lose many large trees, which could topple in soaked ground and heavy wind. In the Tennessee Valley to the north there's the potential of the storm running into another weather anomaly.

"That is basically kind of an eddy in the jet stream. So Hurricane Helene is going right up the side of that," he explained. Then it could stall, drenching that part of the country in flooding rains.

There may be a lot to learn from Helene to protect people from hurricanes, but it is going to be a painful lesson.

"This one really has everything," he said.