Hurricane (Typhoon) — Suwannee, Florida

2024-09-26 to 2024-09-27 · Suwannee, Florida

Event narrative

Multiple buildings in Live Oak suffered extensive roof damage with some roofs uplifting and being tossed across parking lots. A house was completely destroyed in Lancaster along 217th Rd N and CR-136. Numerous trees and powerlines were down across the county. Far outer rainbands began to impact the county on the afternoon of Wednesday, 9/25. Wind gusts near 40 mph were reported, including a 41 mph gust at the WeatherSTEM near Dowling Park at 5:10 pm local time. At 11 pm, the mesonet station at the Suwannee Advent Christian Village had a gust of 76 mph. At 11:20 pm, the mesonet site at the Suwannee County EOC in Live Oak had a gust of 63 mph. At 11:30 pm, the Suwannee Advent Christian Village mesonet near Dowling Park had a sustained wind of 53 mph and a gust of 83 mph, then at 12 am on 9/27, the site had a sustained wind of 70 mph and gust to 99 mph. At 12:40 am, the mesonet site at Suwannee Boys Range about 5 miles west of Suwannee Springs measured a gust of 79 mph. Nearly the entirety of the county (almost 25,000 customers) were without power on the morning of the 27th.

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 1217522. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.