Helene kills 21, unleashes floods and knocks out power to millions across South

Helene is triggering dangerous rain and flooding across the U.S. South, where it has killed at least 21 people and cut power to over 4 million customers after coming ashore in Florida as a major hurricane.

More than 5.2 million people face a moderate or high risk of excessive rain Friday as Helene, with winds of 35 miles per hour, pushes inland across North Carolina, said Scott Kleebauer, a forecaster at the Weather Prediction Center. The heaviest rain will now be shifting into Tennessee and Kentucky after pummeling portions of Georgia and the Carolinas.

The storm, which has weakened to a tropical depression, is forecast to stall out over the Tennessee Valley late Friday and stay there through the weekend as it merges with a larger weather system.

“This will be one of the most significant weather events to happen in the western portions of the area in the modern era,” the National Weather Service said as the storm dumped rain across the southern Appalachian Mountains, where rivers have already begun flooding and could reach record heights.

Residents downstream of the dam at Lake Lure in western North Carolina were urged to leave their homes as officials feared the structure would give way and flood the valley, the weather service said. The lake was featured in the 1987 film “Dirty Dancing.” Nearby Cove Creek has reached a record height.

“I would be surprised if there are not multiple” dam failures throughout the area, Brigadier General Daniel H. Hibner of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said at a briefing. “It’s not uncommon to see a dam failure during an event like this.”

There were at least 21 storm-related deaths, according to the Associated Press. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said late Thursday that the first fatality was in Tampa, where a sign fell into a car on the highway.

Utility giant Duke Energy Corp. reported nearly 1.7 million homes and businesses were without power in the Carolinas and Florida. The utility said the storm inflicted damage to about 23,000 locations on its system, including broken poles and downed electrical lines.

“We are still facing storm conditions in the Carolinas,” said Duke Energy spokesman Jeff Brooks. “We are still seeing a lot of water and a lot of wind. We’ve had challenges accessing outages because of flooding and mudslides in the mountains.”

In Atlanta, where a rare flash-flood emergency had been issued earlier, Peachtree Creek is at major flood stage and has risen by more than 21 feet since Wednesday. The Georgia city has seen nearly 8 inches of rain in the last two days and heavy showers will continue through midday.

Asheville had its rainiest-ever September day Thursday with a record 5.78 inches, the weather service said. The Swannanoa River at Biltmore reached a record crest Friday, rising more than 21 feet since Wednesday.

Helene came ashore late Thursday as a Category 4 hurricane on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale, with 140 mile-per-hour winds, near the mouth of the Aucilla River in Florida’s Big Bend region on its western coast. That’s close to where Hurricane Debby struck in August and major Hurricane Idalia hit in 2023, the National Hurricane Center said.

The deadly storm has shuttered transportation, threatened crops and is so massive that rain could fall from Springfield, Illinois, to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina – a distance of more than 700 miles. Damages and losses may reach $25 billion, according to Chuck Watson, a disaster modeler with Enki Research.

From Florida to Virginia, more than 4 million customers were without power from Florida to Ohio as of 2 p.m. New York time, PowerOutage.us said. The most extensive outages will likely occur in the Appalachians.

“Residents in these areas should be prepared for the possibility of long-duration power outages,” the hurricane center said.

The Elba liquefied natural gas export plant near Savannah, Georgia, is restarting after power outages caused by Helene, operator Kinder Morgan Inc. said.

More than 900 flights into or out of the U.S. were canceled on Friday, with Charlotte, North Carolina, Tampa and Atlanta being hardest hit, according to FlightAware, an airline tracking service.

Cotton crops in the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic and corn and soybeans as far north as central Indiana and Ohio are at risk of damage from Helene’s impacts, StoneX said in a report.

Several more inches of rain will likely fall across the southern Appalachian Mountains, where high terrain and narrow valleys raise the risk for flash flooding and landslides through midday, the weather service said. The worst of the downpours will push into Tennessee and Kentucky and throughout parts of the Ohio and Mississippi River Valleys, according to Kleebauer.

In addition to the devastation wrought by Helene, Tropical Storm John made another landfall on Mexico’s coast after bringing nearly a week of flooding and misery across the region, including the states of Guerrero, Chiapas, Oaxaca and Michoacan. The storm has clung to the shoreline, dragging heavy rain into mountainous areas inland.

Elsewhere in the Atlantic, Tropical Storm Joyce has formed and joins Hurricane Isaac far from land, where they won’t be immediate threats. This brings the season total to 10 named storms. The Atlantic hurricane season, which ends Nov. 30, has 14 storms on average.

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(With assistance from Felipe Marques, Ruth Liao, Tarso Veloso, Ari Natter, Lauren Rosenthal and Mark Chediak.)