Hurricane Helene has rapidly gained strength as it moves north up the Gulf of Mexico toward the United States and is forecast to be one of the most dangerous storms to hit the Florida coast in recent history.

Helene gained strength as it moved over deep, warm waters, fueling its intensification on Thursday, the U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.

Heavy rains and a “life-threatening storm surge” along the entire west coast of Florida were forecast for the southeastern United States, the NHC said.

“A catastrophic and deadly storm surge is expected along portions of the Florida Big Bend coast,” the NHC said, predicting that tides in Apalachee Bay could reach heights of up to 20 feet (6 meters).

“As someone who issued these forecasts, I assure you that the folks at the NHC are not making these changes lightly. It doesn’t get any bigger than this,” Michael Lowry, a hurricane specialist and storm surge expert at the local TV weather report in Miami, wrote on social media.

Helene is expected to be one of the strongest storms to hit the region in years, said Phil Klotzbach, a hurricane researcher at Colorado State University. He said only three Gulf hurricanes since 1988 have been larger than Helene’s predicted size: Irma in 2017, Wilma in 2005 and Opal in 1995.

Hurricane-force winds will extend up to 95 kilometers (60 miles) from the center, and gale-force winds may reach up to 555 kilometers (345 miles). Rain could occur in the U.S. states of Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky and Indiana.

“Just hope and pray that everyone is safe,” said Connie Dillard as she shopped at a grocery store whose shelves of water and bread were thinning before heading onto the highway out of Tallahassee, Florida’s capital, which lies directly in the path of the storm. “That’s all you can do.”

Airports in St. Petersburg, Tallahassee and Tampa were scheduled to close on Thursday, and 62 hospitals and nursing homes evacuated their patients on Wednesday.

#Helene is expected to be launched tomorrow as a major #Hurricane in the Big Bend of Florida. It would be the fourth hurricane to make landfall on the Gulf Coast in 2024. Only in 5 other years since 1851 have there been 4 or more hurricanes that made landfall on the Gulf Coast: 1886, 1909, 1985, 2005, 2020. pic.twitter.com/tGtWjWuNAM

— Philip Klotzbach (@philklotzbach) 25 September 2024

Forecast: Category 3 reached

The only good news was that the storm was downgraded to Category 3 with winds of 193 km/h (120 mph) when it made landfall, instead of Category 4 with winds of 209 km/h (130 mph) as predicted on Wednesday.

As of Thursday morning, Helene was located about 300 miles (470 km) south of Apalachicola on the coast of Florida’s so-called Big Bend area. It was moving north at 12 miles per hour (19 km/h) and had maximum sustained winds of 105 miles per hour (165 km/h), making it a Category 2 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has issued an emergency warning for most counties in the state. About 18,000 power line workers are standing by to restore power as soon as it is safe to enter the area, and 3,000 U.S. National Guard members are on standby to help with the storm’s aftermath, officials said.

The White House said federal authorities had provided generators, food and water, and deployed search and rescue and power restoration teams.

Some residents of the Gulf Coast in the Florida Panhandle have been evacuated to safer areas inland as memories of recent storm surges are still fresh.

In 2018, Hurricane Michael struck the city of Mexico Beach, Florida, about 100 miles west of where Helene was expected to make landfall. Michael quickly intensified into a devastating Category 5 hurricane and caught the population by surprise, causing an estimated $25.5 billion in damage and leaving 59 people dead.

In 2023, another Category 3 storm, Hurricane Idalia, left up to 500,000 homes without power after it struck Florida’s northwest coast and also caused major flooding damage from the storm surge. Idalia was the strongest hurricane to hit Florida’s Big Bend region since 1950.

Meanwhile, Hurricane John raged again off Mexico’s Pacific coast on Thursday after causing severe damage earlier in the week, killing two people, ripping metal roofs off houses, triggering mudslides and toppling trees, officials said.

John weakened to a tropical depression after making landfall Monday evening before regaining strength and is forecast to make landfall again in the Mexican state of Guerrero, north of Acapulco.

Helene is the eighth named storm of the current Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from June 1 to November 30, and the fourth to make landfall in the United States. Hurricane Francine hit the Gulf Coast of Louisiana nearly two weeks ago as a Category 2 storm.

Since 2000, only three years other than 2024 have seen four or more storms make landfall on the U.S. mainland.

This year’s hurricane season comes with an insurance crisis for homeowners in some U.S. states, which are suffering from rising fees and a reluctance among private insurers to offer coverage in coastal areas.

The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has predicted an above-average Atlantic hurricane season this year as ocean temperatures reach record highs. It forecast 17 to 25 named storms, including four to seven major hurricanes of Category 3 or higher.

However, the season started slowly and meteorologists were looking for factors that might have prevented the formation of severe storms as they passed through the Atlantic’s “hurricane corridor.”