Tropical Depression Helene has brought life-threatening flooding to wide sections of the United States’ south-east where at least 43 people have been killed by a storm that swamped neighbourhoods, triggered mudslides, threatened dams and left more than 3.5 million homes and businesses without power.
The background: Before moving north through the state of Georgia and into Tennessee and the Carolinas, Helene hit Florida’s Big Bend region as a powerful Category 4 hurricane on Thursday local time, packing 225km/h winds.
It left behind overturned boats in harbours, felled trees, submerged cars and flooded streets.
As of early Friday afternoon, the storm had been downgraded to a tropical depression with maximum sustained winds of 55 km/h, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.
But Helene’s heavy rains were still producing catastrophic flooding in many areas. Fears a dam would fail in the Tennessee city of Newport prompted an evacuation order.
Buildings that were destroyed by the storm surge from Hurricane Helene are seen along the shoreline in Cedar Key, Florida. Source: AAP / Stephen Smith/AP
The key quote: “I’ve lived here my whole life, and it breaks my heart to see it,” said Gabe Doty, superintendent of Cedar Key’s water and sewer district.
The island city of Cedar Key, with 700 people just off Florida’s north-west coast, caught the full destructive force of Helene.
What else to know: Helene was unusually large for a Gulf hurricane, forecasters said, though a storm’s size is not the same as its strength, which is based on maximum sustained wind speeds.
A few hours before landfall, Helene’s tropical-storm winds extended outward 500 km, according to the NHC.
By comparison, Idalia, another major hurricane that struck Florida’s Big Bend region in 2023, had tropical-storm winds extending 260 km about eight hours before it made landfall.