Tropical Storm — Western Charlton, Georgia

2024-09-27 to 2024-09-28 · Western Charlton, Georgia

Event narrative

About 30% of homes were still without power in the county as of Monday the 30th, and cell service was 'nearly non-existent in many areas'. Schools remain closed as of the 30th. A number of trees and power lines down throughout the county, including many transformers blown a large tree wrapped in power lines across the road near Martin St. A Weatherstem site in the NW Okefenokee Swamp measured a gust to 64 mph out of the SSE at about 2:10am.

Wider weather episode

Hurricane Helene made landfall as a category 4 with peak winds of near 140 mph in the Florida Big

Bend just east of the Aucilla River Entrance in Taylor County, late Thursday evening September 26,

2024. Helene's main impact to southeast Georgia and northeast Florida was wind damage as it

tracked quickly north-northeast. The very powerful hurricane and the forward motion produced a

wide swath of wind damage across the forecast area with peak wind gusts 55 to 75 mph across the

eastern half of the area, and western zones up to 75 to 100 mph from the Suwannee Valley area

northward through interior southeast GA. The max wind gust of 100 mph was measured at the Alma

GA ASOS in the early morning hours of Friday September 27th. Given the strength of these winds,

widespread power outages, structure damage and downed or uprooted trees occurred across inland

southeast GA and portions of northeast FL. At least 1 tornado occurred, which was in Coffee county.

Maximum rainfall amounts of 3 to 5 inches were located over western half of the area.

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1217238. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.