Hurricane Helene is expected to make landfall on Florida’s northwestern coast and then continue on to torment parts of Georgia, the Carolinas and Tennessee with heavy rain, flash floods and gusty winds.

90% of counties in the United States suffered a weather-related disaster between 2011-2021, according to a report published on Wednesday.

It’s great that summer is here, but that means another major season has arrived, too: Hurricane season.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – This is the best time of the year for surfing in Northeast Florida. October brings the biggest and most consistent surf just before the water temperatures start cooling off. This swell will be more powerful than other tropical systems due to the hurricane’s hybrid form and slow movement. Gradually warmer ocean temperatures made the winds stronger as it acquired tropical characteristics of a warm core and lower pressures. If you’ll recall, Hurricane Sandy had a similar composition that made the biggest surf in Florida since the 1991 Halloween Perfect Storm swell.

Hurricane Sally left its mark on Florida when it slammed into the Gulf Coast this month. But perhaps the clearest visual evidence of Sally’s destructive force can be found at the easternmost point of Perdido Key, a barrier island situated southwest of Pensacola. Satellite images captured by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration before and after Sally’s arrival show the three holes the hurricane punched in the uninhabited stretch of the barrier island. He said it’s not unusual for storms to create the kind of overwash that results in breaches — Hurricane Sandy cut similar holes in Fire Island when it came ashore in 2012, breaches that have yet to be filled. He said it’s too early to say if the Perdido Key breaches will heal on their own.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Florida Power & Light, JEA and Georgia Power crews all know what it’s like to deal with the wake of a hurricane or tropical storm. As Louisiana and Texas grapple with the aftermath of both, crews from the utilities are heading west to help their Gulf Coast counterparts. Crews from JEA left Jacksonville on Wednesday afternoon to answer a mutual aid request from Lafayette, Louisiana. The FPL crews left Tuesday morning from West Palm Beach and arrived Wednesday. Right now, 900+ FPL personnel are on their way to assist in #Marco & #Laura restoration.

It may be time to change the hurricane scale to better represent the overall hurricane dangers. Hurricane expert and seasonal tropical cyclone expert Dr. Philip Klotzbach at Colorado State University said using hurricane pressure is a better way to convey the potential damage from hurricanes compared to using conventional wind measurements. Most who live in the hurricane belt know the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale well. In contrast, Charley had higher pressure and higher winds but was much smaller than Katrina, resulting in less destruction focused around Port Charlotte and less rain. Hurricane Sandy was a classic example, packing a very low Category 3-4 pressure of 942 mb even though it came ashore as a Category 1 on the Saffir-Simpson rating.