Helene made landfall Thursday night in Florida’s Big Bend region as a record-breaking Category 4 hurricane. It hit the state with 140 mph winds and ultimately blew through five states, flattening communities and bringing life-threatening floods. Now, on Saturday morning, at least 50 deaths have been reported as a result of the storm, while NBC News reports nearly “3.3 million customers woke up without power in South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Ohio.”
Meanwhile, more than 400 roads remain closed in Western North Carolina.
On Saturday morning, President Joe Biden approved an emergency declaration for Tennessee, among other states, after the remnants of Hurricane Helene are expected to stall over the region this weekend, bringing an additional 1 to 2 inches of rain on top of already-catastrophic flooding that has left swaths of the Southern United States underwater. “Although rainfall amounts will be light, areas that received excessive rainfall from Helene may see isolated aggression of excessive runoff,” the National Weather Service office in Greenville-Spartanburg said Saturday morning.