‘Nightmare’ Storm Surge and Flooding Feared as Helene Advances

A two-story-high wall of water is forecast to swallow a large stretch of the Florida coastline overnight as Hurricane Helene rages ashore after sundown. Already rain and heavy surf is pounding much of the state’s Gulf Coast, with forecasters warning of a “nightmare” scenario for the communities along the Big Bend region.

Up to 20 feet of storm surge is predicted — an amount exceeded only rarely on the Gulf Coast. The surge in 2005 during Hurricane Katrina, one of the deadliest storms to make landfall in the United States, reached 28 feet. Cities across the Southeast, including Atlanta and Asheville, North Carolina, will face pounding rain and flooding after Helene makes landfall, likely sometime before midnight Thursday.

Here’s what we’re covering:

— Size and strength : Helene was a Category 3 hurricane Thursday evening, with winds of 125 mph. Forecasters with the National Hurricane Center predicted that it would make landfall as a Category 4 storm. In terms of sheer size, Helene is at the upper bound of what hurricanes can reach, they added.

— Appalachian impacts: Beyond Florida’s borders, forecasters predicted “significant landslides” across southern Appalachia through Friday. The Blue Ridge Mountains could see 15 to 20 inches of rain as the hurricane approaches — and some areas could be inundated with as much as 30 inches.

— More evacuees : Some longtime residents of coastal Florida, seasoned hurricane veterans who said they had never before evacuated, were leaving home, faced with Helene’s size and strength. But Michael Bobbitt, a novelist who decided to stay put, said worry had given way to calm: “There’s a resignation here, now.”

— Power outages: More than 200,000 customers were already without power across Florida, Georgia and North Carolina on Thursday evening. Widespread damage to the power grid could cause outages that last days, if not weeks, forecasters warned.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .