One confirmed dead as Hurricane Helene hits Florida – VIDEO

Authorities in Florida are urging residents to follow mandatory evacuation orders as Hurricane Helene barrels across the Gulf of Mexico, threatening life-threatening conditions.

Hurricane Helene swamped parts of Mexico and has already brought tropical storm conditions to Florida, where one person was killed on Thursday evening after a sign fell on their car on a highway in Tampa amid violent winds and rain, according to the Florida Highway Patrol, News.Az reports, citing foreign media.

“EVERYONE along the Florida Big Bend coast is at risk of potentially catastrophic storm surge,” the National Hurricane Center (NHC) said on social media.

The NHC has upgraded Helene, which was expected to make landfall in Florida’s Big Bend region at about 11pm local time (3am GMT, Friday), to an “extremely dangerous” Category 4 with sustained winds near 130 miles per hour (209km/h).

“We’re expecting to see a storm surge inundation of 15 to 20 feet [4.5 to 6 metres] above ground level,” NHC director Mike Brennan said in a video briefing.

“That’s up to the top of a second-storey building. Again, a really unsurvivable scenario is going to play out here in this portion of the Florida coastline,” he said.

In the #US state of #Florida, over 1.1 million homes and businesses were left without power due to #hurricanehelene .

More than 80,000 homes were also without power in #Georgia. A state of emergency has been declared in these two states, as well as in #Alabama, North… pic.twitter.com/zmH42q7Iw5

— News.Az (@news_az) September 27, 2024

Driving rain has flooded roadways, closed schools and airports and left about 698,700 homes and businesses without power in Florida, where a state of emergency has been declared.

Florida state authorities are providing buses to evacuate people from the Big Bend area, home to about 832,000 people, and taking them to shelters in the state capital, Tallahassee.

More than 55 million people in the US have been placed under some form of weather alert from Hurricane Helene.

States of emergency have also been declared in Georgia, North and South Carolina, Virginia and Alabama, as the NHC warned that much of the southeast could experience power outages, toppled trees and intense flooding.

In the southern Appalachian mountains, the National Weather Service has warned the region could be hit with landslides and flooding not seen in more than a century.

News.Az