The super tropical storm named Helen is now a Category 1 hurricane, slamming into the Caribbean Sea near Cuba and Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. Forecasters expect the storm, with maximum sustained winds of 80 mph as of Wednesday morning, to rapidly strengthen over the next 24 hours before hitting western Florida as a severe storm late Thursday.
“There is a risk of life-threatening storm surge from Tropical Storm Helene along the entire west coast of the Florida peninsula,” the National Hurricane Center said in a statement early Wednesday morning.
The National Hurricane Center has predicted parts of Florida's Big Bend could see a storm surge of up to 15 feet. Storm surges, which occur mainly when winds push water inland, are the most dangerous part of a tropical storm and killed more than 40 people in 2022's Hurricane Ian.
Helen may also disrupt part of the spectacular monarch butterfly migration that passes through St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge in the Big Bend in early October.
Helen is the eighth named storm in what has so far been a somewhat puzzling hurricane season, which got off to a shocking start in June when Hurricane Beryl became the earliest Category 5 storm on record, before being unexpectedly quiet for much of August and September.
But many meteorologists are warning people not to be fooled by this late-summer calm.
“It's pretty normal during hurricane season to have a few weeks of quiet followed by a few weeks of activity,” University of Miami climatologist Brian McNoldy told me earlier this month. “I would never read too much into it.”
McNoldy also said that the waters in the Gulf of Mexico have been and still are exceptionally warm, and that hot water is what fuels hurricanes: Ocean Heat Content, a measure of how much heat energy the ocean stores, is the highest it's ever been for this time of year.
Take a look at the graph below: the red line is 2024, the blue line is the average over the past 10 years.
This is of particular concern now, given Helene's predicted path.
Ocean heat could strengthen the storm as it crosses the Gulf of Mexico on its way to Florida, causing it to “exponentially intensify,” meaning wind speeds could increase by more than 35 mph within 24 hours. Forecasters predict Hurricane Helen could hit Florida as a Category 3 or 4 hurricane.
“Sea surface temperatures and ocean heat content in the Gulf of Mexico are both record high,” McNoldy, who produced the graph above, told me. “The surface and deep ocean heat will be all the fuel Helene needs to rapidly intensify between now and tomorrow.”
The record temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico are just one symptom of a broader warming across the North Atlantic that accelerated last year.
The causes of this warming aren't entirely clear, but scientists suspect it's a combination of factors, including climate change raising baseline ocean temperatures, the lingering effects of El Niño weather events, natural climatic variations, and even volcanic eruptions.
“This is beyond the range of fluctuations we have seen so far. [at least] “Over the last 75 years or so, something horrible has happened,” Ben Cartman, director of the Cooperative Institute for Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, a joint initiative between the University of Miami and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), told Vox in August.
