Tropical Storm — Southeastern Columbia, Florida

2024-09-26 to 2024-09-27 · Southeastern Columbia, Florida

Event narrative

Widespread trees and powerlines were reported down throughout the county, as well as structural damage to roofs from strong wind and downed trees. Many roads were blocked due to downed trees and powerlines across the county. On September 27, approximately 99% of Columbia county residents were without power. In downtown Lake City, there was damage to awnings and a metal roof was blown completely off of a business building. Across the Lake City area, there were numerous reports of large trees falling on homes and manufactured homes and damaging their roofs. A couple of those reports had the large tree uproot and fall through the home ultimately destroying the home. A large uprooted tree fell and crushed three cars in Lake City. A crop duster plane was flipped over and the cockpit was damaged at Lake City Gateway Airport.

On 9/27 at 12:44 am, the AWOS station at the Lake City Airport had a gust of 69 mph.

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 1217461. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.