Hurricane Helene strengthening at this hour, the pressure now down
to 974 millibars.
The wind holding steady at 85, but that's going to
start to increase as well over the next few hours.
In fact, by 10:00, it may be greater than 90
mph as deep tropical thunderstorms are beginning to wrap around
that developing eye.
It's a little bit rugged looking right now, but you
can see all that heavy thunderstorm activity, the bright purples
and what almost looks like mountain tops right there off
of the Yucatan Peninsula.
Once this begins to get up here on the north
side of it, it's going to be off to the
races with a rapidly strengthening storm.
There is some model guidance that suggests not only would
this be a Category 4, but it could be a
higher end Category 4 storm approaching Florida's Gulf Coast late
tomorrow afternoon and tomorrow evening.
The lines here represent different forecast model ideas and the
painted on colors here represent one particular model that I
think is doing a pretty good job of showing how
big the wind field is.
So I don't want you to look at this and
think that's exactly how it's going to be on radar
tomorrow or what that'll look like.
But this is a good representation of where it's going
and how big it's going to be by the time
it makes landfall around 7:00 to 8:00 central time tomorrow.
Storm surge up to 20 feet in Apalachee Bay could
be a catastrophic kind of situation there.
The high wind starts to move up into Georgia and
look at this.
We get strong gusty winds east Alabama early Friday morning.
There very well could be a ground stop at Hartsfield
Jackson Airport at some point Thursday night or Friday because
of high cross winds over 40 mph at the airport.
That's something to keep in mind if you're traveling.
This could cause region wide and nationwide problems if they
have to do a ground up there in Atlanta, in
Birmingham.
We're not looking at really bad conditions here in the
central part of the state.
It will be a breezy day and it will be
quite wet.
But by 1:00 Friday afternoon, the heaviest rain clearly over
here in the eastern side of the state, potentially about
a three to five inch stripe that develops there in
Cherokee County, Etowah County, Calhoun County, Cleburne County, think Hwy.
40, Highway 431 and east of there, that's where the
heaviest rain and the strongest winds are likely.
That's why there's a tropical storm warning up for Cherokee
County and for Cleburne County, Randolph and Chambers and Lee
counties.
60s tonight, 70s tomorrow.
Heavy rain starts developing over E Alabama in the afternoon
for Birmingham, Jasper, Tuscaloosa, Demopoulos, Coleman.
We're not dealing with much tomorrow morning.
Maybe a few spotty showers, but then in comes the
rain from Helene moving from Georgia into Alabama.
So as you start to watch the radar and you
can see it on the WVTM 13 app tomorrow evening,
these heavier rain bands are going to start moving in
this direction.
That means it's Thursday evening, Thursday night when the heavier
showers start to get toward us.
There comes the core of Helene.
You got really heavy rain and gusty winds northeast Alabama
through the day on Friday, but in Birmingham and Tuscaloosa,
we're just rainy and breezy Thursday.
Rain tapers off on Friday.
Some spotty showers are leftover going into the weekend, and
we'll stay warm and a bit drier into the first
part of next week.
You're watching WVTM 13 news.