Tropical Storm — Coastal St. Johns, Florida

2024-09-26 to 2024-09-27 · Coastal St. Johns, Florida

Event narrative

Many reports of downed trees and power lines across the county. About 20,000 lost without power. Peak sustained winds were 45-60 mph with gusts 55-70 mph. High surf eroded portions of the beach near the St. Augustine Pier creating escarpments as high as 7 ft high. A total of 9 people checked into 3 county shelters.

On 9/26 at 12 pm, the St. Augustine CMAN station SAUF1 measured a wind gust of 41 mph. At 12:46 pm, the St. Augustine Airport AWOS measured a wind gust of 40 mph. At 3:20 pm, a mesonet site in the City of St. Augustine measured a wind gust of 40 mph. At 4:40 pm, a mesonet site Lewis measured a wind gust of 40 mph. At 5:27 pm, a mesonet station in Summerhouse measured a wind gust of 43 mph. At 5:42 pm, the same station measured a gust of 45 mph, then at 5:57 pm the station measured a gust of 49 mph. At 6:10 pm, the Lewis station measured a gust of 49 mph. At 7 pm, the CMAN station SAUF1 measured a wind gust of 48 mph. At 8 pm, a mesonet site in the City of St. Augustine measured a wind gust of 47 mph and at 8:20 pm, the site measured a 53 mph wind gust. At 8:56 pm, the AWOS at the St. Johns Regional Airport measured a gust of 45 mph and a mesonet site in Summerhouse had a gust of 55 mph. At 9 pm, the City of St. Augustine mesonet station had a gust of 59 mph. At 10:10 pm, the mesonet station in the City of St. Augustine had a gust of 65 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 1217515. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.