How did the Florida Keys get through Hurricane Helene? ‘It’s all starting to recede now’

The Florida Keys and Key West managed to get through Hurricane Helene with some minor street flooding and higher than normal tides from storm surge as the massive system passed the island chain on its way north to the Big Bend region Thursday morning.

In Key West, low-lying streets that usually flood during tropical storms were covered in seawater from Helene’s surge. These included the Southernmost Point, Elizabeth Street and Eisenhower Drive.

“It’s all starting to recede now,” said Alyson Crean, Key West police spokeswoman.

READ MORE: Florida already feeling strengthening Cat 2 Hurricane Helene’s winds and surge

By late Thursday morning, South Roosevelt Boulevard and Atlantic Boulevard were the only roads still closed, but were expected to open later in the day, said Key West City Manager Todd Stoughton.

South Roosevelt was closed in both directions from Key West International Airport to the corner of Atlantic Boulevard and Bertha Street, said Julie Brown, community outreach specialist for the Florida Department of Transportation.

Storm surge made its presence known farther north of Key West, from the Lower Keys all the way up to Key Largo in the Upper Keys, residents said.

Cendee Hedrick of Cudjoe Key, about 23 miles north of Key West, sent a photo to the Miami Herald of seawater coming over her dock early Thursday morning.

Helene Colonna said the small island just off Sombrero Beach in the Middle Keys city of Marathon was completely submerged.

Jonathan Rizzo, warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Key West, said Helene passed the archipelago about 285 miles west of the Southernmost City in the Gulf of Mexico.

Chip Kasper, meteorologist-in-charge of the weather service in Key West, said in a post on X that buoys maintained by the Scripps Institute of Oceanography and the University of California San Diego measured wave heights near Satan Shoal, just off the Florida Reef tract, of up to 16 feet.