‘An ugly wind’: Hurricane Helene hits Taylor County, marking another near-miss for Tallahassee

Helene, the most powerful hurricane on record to strike Apalachee Bay and one that threatened Tallahassee with a direct hit, made landfall to the east instead late Thursday, bringing more destruction to a storm-weary part of North Florida.

The National Hurricane Center said Helene officially made landfall at 11:10 p.m. just east of the Aucilla River and about 10 miles west-southwest of Perry.

The hurricane, with fierce 140-mph winds at landfall, was the third to barrel into the Taylor County coastline in just 13 months and plunge that part of North Florida into darkness and misery. It also marked another near-miss for Tallahassee, which had ramped up for a massive restoration response not seen since Hurricane Michael nearly six years ago.

Helene, which had been on track to hit the Big Bend since before it even formed, came ashore in darkness, and early damage reports were still trickling in before sunrise Friday.

“It’s an ugly wind, a lot of rain,” said Mark Southerland, a 63-year-old lifelong resident of Perry. “I just went outside and I have no damage yet. I might get lucky.”

There were early signs of calamity in Taylor County. The National Weather Service in Tallahassee posted photos taken by a storm chaser that showed a number of mobile homes knocked off their foundations and pushed together under 8-10 feet of storm surge in Steinhatchee.

In the hours before landfall, the Taylor County Sheriff’s Office issued grave instructions for people who ignored evacuation orders.

“If you or someone you know chose not to evacuate, please write your name, birthday and important information on your arm or leg in a permanent marker so that you can be identified and family notified.”

Not long after landfall, the water was rising in historic Cedar Key, topping 8 and a half feet, higher than the previous record set during Hurricane Idalia last year. The tide gauge at the Steinhatchee River rose an incredible 11.4 feet in the span of about an hour and 15 minutes, according to NOAA.

Helene knocked out power to an estimated million-plus accounts in Florida, according to a USA TODAY power outage tracker. Nearly everyone in Hamilton, Madison, Suwannee and Taylor counties were without electricity.

In Leon County, more than 60,000 city and Talquin Electric customers were offline. That number was climbing even after Helene crossed into Georgia.

The city of Tallahassee had geared up for a restoration effort that would have included 2,000 personnel, including mutual-aid crews from nine states and contract workers. It was not immediately clear whether some of those assets will be redirected to harder hit parts of the region.

Leon County Administrator Vince Long, who rode the storm out at the Emergency Operations Center, told the Democrat around 2:40 a.m. Friday that there were a couple of reports of trees on structures but no widespread damage to buildings. He said emergency calls were lower than expected.

“It sort of had us in the crosshairs for quite a while as it moved into the Gulf and closer to us,” Long said. “And minor degrees of variation in that track can have a major effect on what the impact is here to us. And certainly by it trending a little east … it appears anyway that the impacts (here) could have been far greater.”

Long added that the extent of the damage in Leon County won’t be known until assessments start at dawn.

“We will be doing damage assessments at first light,” he said. “And we have crews pre-staged throughout the county in shelters so that they can begin work immediately.”

Other parts of the Big Bend also appeared to have escaped the brunt of Helene’s fury. In Wakulla County, there were downed trees and a report of one on a house, Capt. Jeffrey Yarbrough told the Democrat around 2:30 a.m. Friday.

“But largely the storm surge that was predicted never really materialized based on the track the storm actually took,” he said. “Our hearts go out to Taylor County, who’s having to deal with it again.”

Helene passed about 40 miles east-southeast of Florida’s Capitol, bringing one peak gust of 67 mph to Tallahassee International Airport, according to Dr. Ryan Truchelut of WeatherTiger.

“One final strong band is about to roll through town from the west, which may actually produce our top wind gusts in town,” he wrote early Friday.

At 1:30 a.m. Friday, light traffic could be seen driving downtown, where traffic signals were either blinking or operating normally without generator power. The lights were on at all of the big hotels downtown, the Capitol and other landmarks.

A little after midnight, the Leon County Sheriff’s Office said it was responding to several vehicle crashes.

“Please stay off the roads at this time,” LCSO said in a Facebook post. “It is not safe for travel.”

NWS Tallahassee: No ‘rhyme or reason’ to repeat hurricane pattern

Helene made landfall less than two months after Hurricane Debby, a Category 1 storm, hit near Steinhatchee, a small fishing community in southern Taylor County.

Before that, on Aug. 30, 2023, Hurricane Idalia, a Category 3 storm with 125 mph winds, then a record for Apalachee Bay, made landfall near Keaton Beach.

“I would say it’s rather incredible,” said Jasmine Montgomery, meteorologist with NWS Tallahassee. “There’s no rhyme or reason to it. These storms, more or less, developed in the Caribbean, moved up through the Gulf of Mexico and kept going until they hit land. It’s just the Gulf Coast is prime real estate for a hurricane.”

Justin Amman, who lives near downtown Perry with his family, said Helene wasn’t as frightening as Idalia, which made landfall in the morning.

“Idalia seemed worse because you could see everything happening,” said Amman, a starting offensive lineman on Florida State football’s 1999 national championship team. “Debby passed through quickly. I have heard stuff crashing outside. I won’t know what it is until tomorrow.”

Dinah Pulver of USA Today contributed to this article. Contact Jeff Burlew at jburlew@tallahassee.com or 850-599-2180.

This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: ‘An ugly wind’: Helene hits Taylor County, marks near-miss for Tallahassee

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