After slamming Florida’s Big Bend as the strongest storm on record to hit the region, Hurricane Helene carved a path of destruction from deep South Georgia to the state’s mountainous northeast and on into the Carolinas and Tennessee, toppling trees, forcing water rescues and knocking out power to hundreds of thousands.
Fed by superheated waters in the Gulf of Mexico — made even hotter by human-caused climate change, scientific research shows — the storm exploded from a Category 1 hurricane into a massive, Category 4 with winds of 140 mph in the hours before landfall. Helene maintained hurricane-force winds as it pushed into South Georgia, ripping buildings and crops to shreds.
Heavy damage was reported in communities like Valdosta, in South Georgia, Augusta on the state’s eastern edge, and far north into Rabun County.
Credit: Jenni Girtman
Credit: Jenni Girtman
On Friday, Gov. Brian Kemp’s office said the storm had claimed the lives of at least 15 people in the state, making it the deadliest tropical storm to hit Georgia since Hurricane Alberto dumped more than two feet of rain in 1994, killing more than 30.
Among the Georgians killed by Helene was a first responder who Kemp said was on-duty in South Georgia.
“One of our finest lost his life trying to save others,” Kemp said.
Deaths were also reported in Florida, where devastating storm surge swamped coastal communities, and in the Carolinas, where the storm’s heavy rains were wreaking havoc in the the southern Appalachian Mountains.
In North Carolina on Friday, officials ordered communities near the Lake Lure dam in the western part of the state to evacuate immediately, after the National Weather Service warned the structure could fail. Overflowing rivers spilled floodwaters into parts of downtown Asheville, North Carolina, and forced helicopter rescues in towns in east Tennessee.
In Georgia, Valdosta appeared to be among the hardest-hit parts of the state.
Several buildings in the city’s downtown had collapsed and some people were still trapped in damaged homes around the area on Friday, Kemp said.
“Pretty much 99% of the county is without power right now,” Lowndes County spokeswoman Meghan Barwick said. “We have tons of trees down all over the county, power lines all over the roads.”
Atlanta, meanwhile, received an “unprecedented” 11.12 inches of rainfall in a 48-hour period between Wednesday and Friday, breaking the previous record of 9.59 inches set in 1886, said Bill Murphey, Georgia’s state climatologist.
Credit: John Spink
Credit: John Spink
The downpours sent Peachtree Creek and other local tributaries spilling over their banks, and first responders were busy Friday morning pulling residents to safety from homes and apartments left stranded by rising floodwaters.
A family of three — two adults and an infant — plus their two dogs were rescued from floodwaters after being trapped on the roof of their car along Bohler Road in northwest Atlanta on Friday morning.
“As they were making their way through, the vehicle started to float and moved off the roadway,” Atlanta fire Battalion Chief Scott Seely said.
At about 4:30 p.m. Friday, Georgia Power and Georgia EMC, which represents 41 electric membership cooperatives mostly serving rural parts of the state, were still reporting more than 1 million combined customers without power across the state. Outages were widespread, but particularly severe in South Georgia, east Georgia, and the mountains in northeast Georgia.
Georgia Transmission Corp., which maintains the transmission infrastructure EMCs and others rely on, said it was discovering “catastrophic damage” to key parts of the grid. The organization said Friday at least 100 high-voltage transmission lines — the major highways of the electric grid — were crippled by the storm, along with more than 60 substations.
It was unclear how long it would take to return service to hard hit areas. Before the storm arrived, Georgia Power’s president and CEO Kim Greene warned Georgians should brace for “the potential of power outages that could last multiple days due to the size and extensive reach of this storm.”
A shift to the east
After raking across South Georgia as a hurricane, Helene weakened to a tropical storm, pushing toward the Carolinas and Tennessee, following the eastern edge of the forecast cone.
That left metro Atlanta out of the crosshairs of the strongest winds, but placed parts of east and central Georgia, including Augusta, in the path of the still-powerful tropical storm’s gusts. At least three of the reported fatalities were in the Augusta area.
The city was lashed by 80 mph winds, which downed trees — including on Washington Road, where Augusta National Golf Club is located. Damage to homes and structure fires were also reported as Helene veered through the area.
About 90 miles southwest of Augusta, Helene surprised residents of Dublin, like Angel Coney, when it arrived packing dangerous winds about 3 a.m. Friday.
For a while, Coney said she didn’t so much as peek outside, huddling in her basement with her sons. The roaring wind sounded like someone stomping on their roof, she said.
“It was awful,” Coney said. “It was loud. Like a bomb. You heard everything falling.”
Coney and her sons, Travi, 10 and Mari, 9, were unharmed, but the storm killed two in surrounding Laurens County. One died from a weather-related automobile crash and another was killed when a tree struck a house.
Savannah, which was hit hard just last month by Hurricane Debby and originally wasn’t among the areas forecast to be most threatened by Helene, ended up facing powerful wind gusts of up to 76 mph overnight Friday.
The winds downed trees, ripped traffic lights from above intersections, tore awnings from storefronts and causing a roof to collapse on a historic building in the heart of downtown. Storm surge from Helene’s passing also caused a temporary closure of U.S. 80, the causeway that links Savannah to Tybee Island. The nearby Fort Pulaski tide gauge measured 9.84 feet at peak high tide, more than three feet higher than predicted, but not enough to swamp the low-lying road.
Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez
Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez
In Hart County, near where I-85 crosses into South Carolina, the chairman of the County Commission, Marshall Sayer, rated the storm as one of “the worst one we’ve had in years.”
Citing a tally from the county administrator, he said at least 178 roads had downed trees, and at least eight homes and one business were damaged. No injuries had been reported, and road crews across the county were out clearing the pavement, with the help of residents, fire department crews, sheriff’s investigators and deputies running chain saws.
Ryan Willis, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Peachtree City, said the enormous storm’s drift to the east left most of metro Atlanta on the storm’s weaker, western side, sparing its tree canopy from the most ferocious winds.
Most of the metro area still experienced gusts of about 35 to 45 miles per hour, Willis said. That was strong enough to knock down trees and cause power outages, but mercifully short of the worst predictions before the storm, which showed near hurricane-force winds potentially blowing through Atlanta.
“We were very fortunate that, at least locally, the center of the storm tracked a little farther east and spared us from what would have been really devastating wind impacts,” Willis said.
Flood risks remain
Flooding, meanwhile, will remain a threat across the city and state for days.
The rainfall from the cold front that arrived Wednesday and Helene filled some of the region’s larger creeks and streams to their brim or beyond: U.S. Geological Survey stream gages showed both Nancy Creek and Peachtree Creek climbed above major flood stage during the height of the storm.
The tributaries empty into the Chattahoochee River, which data showed was already more than three feet above major flood stage on Friday afternoon near Vinings. The Savannah River near Augusta was also approaching minor flood territory Friday, USGS data showed.
In August, Hurricane Debby dumped about a foot of rain on southeast Georgia. But after the storm dissipated and left the area, floods submerged neighborhoods days later, as huge amounts of water from farther north moved down the Ogeechee River toward the coast.
As the rain Helene dropped is funneled into Georgia’s larger rivers, residents living near major water bodies should be on alert for floods, Willis said.
“The Chattahoochee will be rising pretty substantially here through today, and then, longer-term, that will flow downstream into central and South Georgia through the coming days,” Willis said.
— Reporters Adam Van Brimmer, Joe Kovac Jr., Meris Lutz, Fletcher Page, Greg Bluestein, Matt Kempner and Henri Hollis contributed to this story.
A note of disclosure
This coverage is supported by a partnership with Green South Foundation and Journalism Funding Partners. You can learn more and support our climate reporting by donating at ajc.com/donate/climate.
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