Tropical Storm Helene Expected To Slam Florida As Cat-3 Hurricane

Tropical Storm Helene has been born. Governor DeSantis has expanded the state of emergency for the Sunshine State to include 61 counties.

Earlier today from the Emergency Operations Center, he compared this storm with Hurricane Michael in 2018 which intensified quickly into a Category 5 storm after forming in the Gulf.

Helene's predicted to be a Category-3 hurricane, a storm with winds 111-130 mph (96-113 kt or 178-209 kph) and storm surge generally 9-12 ft above normal, by the time it makes landfall Thursday as far west as the Panama City area with the potential for storm surge along much of the Gulf coast, especially from the Tampa Bay area north.

The National Hurricane Center's 11am advisory states:

At 1100 AM EDT (1500 UTC), the center of Tropical Storm Helene was located near latitude 19.5 North, longitude 84.3 West. Helene is moving toward the northwest near 12 mph (19 km/h), and this general motion is expected to continue through early Wednesday. A northward to north-northeastward motion at a faster forward speed is expected on Wednesday and Thursday. On the forecast track, the center of Helene will move across the far northwestern Caribbean Sea through tonight, and then move across the eastern Gulf of Mexico Wednesday and Thursday, potentially reaching the Gulf coast of Florida late Thursday.