Tropical Storm — South Central Duval, Florida

2024-09-26 to 2024-09-27 · South Central Duval, Florida

Event narrative

Numerous downed trees and power lines were reported across the county.. Peak wind gusts

were 74 mph at Jacksonville Naval Air Station near Orange Park. At least 224,000 customers were without power during the height of the storm based on the JEA outage map. There were around 300 Emergency Road Access Team deployments to remove trees and power lines from across county roads and homes. About 360 people went to 5 shelters that the county opened. Schools and city offices were closed on 9/26 and 9/27.

On 9/26 at 5:53 pm, the AWOS at Naval Air Station Jacksonville (NAS JAX) measured a wind gust of 45 mph. At 6:53 pm, the NAS JAX AWOS measured a wind gust of 49 mph. At 7:42 pm, a mesonet site along the St. Johns at the Terminal Channel near Tallyrand measured a wind gust of 46 mph. At 7:53 pm, the AWOS station at NAS Jacksonville measured a wind gust of 56 mph. At 8:42 pm, the mesonet site at the Terminal Channel measured a wind gust of 59 mph.

At 6:52 pm, the EM reported storm surge inundation from the St. Johns was flowing over the river band onto Lomax Street in Riverside. A nearby parking lot was flooded. At the time of the report, the St. Johns River at the Main Street Bridge was 1.93 ft MHHW at 6:48 pm, just below moderate flood stage (high tide was at 6:43 pm). At 7 pm, storm surge from the St. Johns inundated E Adams Street and E Monroe Street near the intersection with Marsh Street and along Lafayette Street and Forsyth Street, this area is near the Hogan's Creek juncture with the St. Johns River on the north bank in downtown Jacksonville. At 9 PM, Riverside Ave was flooded with floodwaters reaching up to the undercarriage of cars. A dock was also damaged at the Riverside Apartments.

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 1217483. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.