It was reporting winds of around 135 kt at flight level, which is about 155mph. At the surface, that roughly translates to 130 mph, which is what the NHC upgraded it to.
Hurricane Hunter has found pressure of 943 mb now, which shows that it may have intensified by another 5 mph or more.
Looks like they're having fun in the eye, or looking for the center, lmao.
Edit: They found the center I think. 942.6 mb extrapolated.
Pressure is dropping like a rock. I knew this one had the bad Juju. She may not reach Category 5, but God damn is she going to try. If you decided to ride it out in the Panhandle coast, time to pray. It's too late to leave now.
Ryan Hall is saying this is the strongest storm to ever hit the Florida Panhandle, unless we count a storm from the 1850s that had questionable measurements.
I'm just sitting here admiring this storms beauty. She is so terribly perfect.
She formed behind the Barrier Islands.
She threaded the Yucatan Straights.
She turned to the Northeast.
It was unusually warm in the Gulf this week.
Her track is now perfectly slotted in to maximize the geography of the Florida Peninsula, slotting in perfectly to maximize time over water.
She's coming in at Night, at High Tide.
As a potential Category 5.
She's perfect. An absolutely perfect Hurricane. She did everything she needed to do to result in the worst outcome for the people at the landfall point.
Hurricane Hunter flight AF306 received mechanical damage due to an updraft inside Helene's eye. Don't think I've heard of that before, but it explains why recon data hasn't updated.
Hurricane Hunter flight AF306 received mechanical damage due to an updraft inside Helene's eye. Don't think I've heard of that before, but it explains why recon data hasn't updated.
Mission 18 run by the Air Force is still going in from the looks of the tracking website.
No good for forecasting though. It will be in position to record just before land fall. Makes me really curious how fast she's intensifying though, since she managed to kick a hurricane hunter out.
Tallahassee Doppler Radar is recording 150 MPH sustained as the wall approaches. This is translation data due to the speed of the Hurricane. Sustained is probably close to 140 now.
Outer bands of the storm have reached Virginia incidentally. This bitch is huge.
This is so far from a “nothing burger” it isn’t funny . Areas are going to see flooding the likes which haven’t been seen in a century. This is going to smack hard.
This is so far from a “nothing burger” it isn’t funny . Areas are going to see flooding the likes which haven’t been seen in a century. This is going to smack hard.
Everything from Mexico Beach to Cedar Key is going to be just gone. Tallahassee itself is going to get rocked. It's going to take them weeks to get things back to a semblance of normal. And that is just the start. This thing is going to cause massive regional disruption all the way to Ohio and Maryland.
This is why you live in a state that has tornados instead of hurricanes. Yeah it's still a swirling vortex of death but at least it's a dry swirling vortex of death.
