The massive size of Hurricane Helene will likely place it among the largest hurricanes to threaten our region so far this century.
If forecasts hold true, the storm could stretch more than 400 miles across by Thursday afternoon when its center is expected to pass about 125 miles off the coast of Tampa Bay toward landfall in the Panhandle.
More importantly, hurricane and tropical storm-force winds and rain from the asymmetrical storm’s east side are expected to stretch 250 miles, enough to feel impacts across the entire Florida peninsula, which is about 140 miles wide at most.
The above-average size of Helene’s forecast wind field would make it larger than 90% of hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico over the past 20 years, the National Weather Service noted in an advisory earlier this week.
That size means comparisons to previous hurricanes of a similar strength and track to Helene are not a good predictor of what we’ll experience in Tampa Bay, said National Hurricane Center senior hurricane specialist John Cangialosi.
Take Hurricane Idalia, for instance, which struck Florida’s Big Bend region in 2023. Helene’s track past Tampa Bay is very similar, Cangialosi said, and forecasters expect the storms will have a very similar intensity.
“But (Helene) will stretch about 250 miles east of its center, where Idalia was about 150, about average,” Cangialosi said. “So even if, if they take the same track with the same intensity, you’ll still see much more notable impacts because of that size difference.”
Click this link for the original source of this article.
Author: Paul Bedard
This content is courtesy of, and owned and copyrighted by, https://www.offthepress.com and its author. This content is made available by use of the public RSS feed offered by the host site and is used for educational purposes only. If you are the author or represent the host site and would like this content removed now and in the future, please contact USSANews.com using the email address in the Contact page found in the website menu.
