Hurricane Helene is about to join a list of names that are part of history: Michael, Charley, Ian, Wilma, and Idalia. All those names mark significant, deadly, and destructive hurricanes that have hit the Florida Big Bend or the west coast of Florida this century. Helene will join that list today, and it will become a red-letter name for Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas as it brings devastating impacts to those states.
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One reason Helene is going to be so destructive is its size. Like Ike, which hit Texas in 2008, Helene is a mammoth hurricane. Tropical storm force winds extend out 350 miles from the eye. That’s the distance from Brownsville to Houston or Lubbock to Dallas by road. All that wind is pushing water in the Gulf of Mexico into Florida. All that wind will push inland tonight as Helene rapidly moves north, not allowing it time to weaken quickly before moving into Georgia. South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida are under Tropical Storm or Hurricane Warnings—all those states.
Tens of thousands of trees will be toppled in saturated soils, and catastrophic damage is likely to the power infrastructure. Millions will be without power for days, with the most severely damaged without power for a month. A twenty-foot storm surge will push into the Florida Big Bend near and just east of Helene’s landfall later today. Battering waves on top of the storm surge will make things even worse.
Over a foot of rain will fall on the Appalachian Mountains in eastern Tennessee and the Carolinas, where a foot of rain had already fallen yesterday. Historical flooding has not been seen for over a century, and if it is no longer, it will bring mudslides and even more destruction to those areas. What more can I say? In some ways, this will be the worst-case scenario brought to life. For Texas, we’ll get upper-level cloud cover in Northeast Texas on Friday, and there will be light northerly winds across the state. That’s it.
Texas Weather Looking Warm & Quiet to End September
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The only rain chances for the next seven days will be confined to the Rio Grande Valley, Lower Texas Gulf Coast, Coastal Bend, and South Texas beginning on Sunday. Scattered showers and storms will remain possible into early next week, with some locations picking up over one inch of rain. The rest of Texas should experience an extended period of dry, primarily calm weather. Afternoon temperatures will generally top out in the 80s across the northern two-thirds of Texas, with the 90s in the Borderland and the southern third of Texas. El Paso may hit 100 degrees tomorrow, and we may flirt with 100 degrees in parts of the Edwards Plateau early next week. All of that will be on the warm side for early October.
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