Every year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts the outcome of the hurricane season. This year, NOAA officials predicted an “above-normal” season. We can all agree that they were correct, with three major hurricanes making landfall and many more that aren’t considered major hurricanes.
Panic and chaos arose when news outlets announced that a new hurricane had formed, named Hurricane Helene. Helene was announced as a hurricane on September 25, 2024, and it was aiming for the Big Bend region of Florida. People evacuated to northern states, where they thought they were safe. When Helene made landfall on September 26, 2024, as a category 4 hurricane, it damaged a lot of buildings.
After making landfall it weakened to a category 1 hurricane but still ripped through parts of the states of Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, and Missouri. Many people in the landlocked states thought they were going to get rain; they weren’t expecting it to get as bad as it did. With millions of people out of power, thousands of people without homes and injured, and hundreds of people who died, Helene has become the deadliest mainland hurricane since Katrina in 2005.
What played a big factor in these damages was the dams breaking across several states and massive amounts of flooding pouring through cities and washing homes, businesses, and government buildings away. Farms were left destroyed with several missing animals, victims left with nothing to return to, and part of the country had lost everything they had due to this hurricane.
It didn’t just stop at Helene. Another storm surfaced in the Gulf of Mexico. Meteorologists were predicting that this storm would be the worst hurricane that Floridians had seen in a century. Hurricane Milton was picked up on satellites on October 8, 2024. Milton had reached a whopping 180 mph winds and was a category 5 hurricane that moved quickly towards Florida. Floridians had no time to pick up what was left of their homes from Helene and were already expecting another powerful storm. What made this storm far more dangerous than it was, was all the loose debris from people’s houses that would be picked up by the hurricane’s winds and tossed around. Crews made an effort to try and pick up as much debris as they could within a day of preparation, carrying off over a ton of debris to land sites.
On October 9th, Milton made landfall as a Category 3 hurricane. The hurricane produced a tornado outbreak with 19 confirmed tornadoes that touched down. Milton downsized while on land and moved out the east side of Florida into the Atlantic Ocean.
As of October 21st, many homes and businesses are still damaged, leaving people without places to sleep or eat. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was activated in the Southeast region of the country, setting up multiple relief destinations across multiple states. FEMA will work with local law enforcement and other natural disaster agencies to help those affected.
