Hurricane Helene - Aftermath in The Big Bend

Keaton Beach, Florida, residents may move on after Hurricane Helene

Florida's Big Bend is the area where the Florida Panhandle transitions to the Florida Peninsula. It is mostly south and east of Tallahassee. Keaton Beach, is about 15 miles northwest of Steinhatchee, Florida, or about 55 miles southeast of Tallahassee. Those distances will be longer if you are driving. Keaton is very close to the Big Bend Wildlife Management Area.

Keaton Beach was still trying to recover from Hurricane Idalia, which crushed the Nature Coast a little over a year ago, when Helene came roaring through Thursday night. Residents who spoke to the USA TODAY Network - Florida said they had just finished the insurance process on their homes or they were still fixing things that were damaged during Idalia.

But then Helene's "unsurvivable" surge and 140 mph winds came whipping through Keaton Beach, and people wondered whether it was worth it to try to rebuild again.

Hurricane Helene made landfall as a category 4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale, with maximum sustained winds of 140 MPH. The National Hurricane Center describes a category 4 as follows.

Catastrophic damage will occur: Well-built framed homes can sustain severe damage with loss of most of the roof structure and/or some exterior walls. Most trees will be snapped or uprooted and power poles downed. Fallen trees and power poles will isolate residential areas. Power outages will last weeks to possibly months. Most of the area will be uninhabitable for weeks or months.

Florida is in something of a property insurance crisis. You can imagine why. Many people cannot afford property insurance, let alone hurricane insurance, which the last time I looked into it, was too expensive. Understandably so.

Florida has the highest property insurance rates in the country, with homeowners paying $3,340 per year on average in 2023, according to the Insurance Information Institute. That’s a 37% increase from 2021, or $903.

I don't believe that would cover named storms, though I have not looked into Florida insurance in more than a decade. But hurricanes, the devastation, and the insurance costs are why I don't live there.

There is more at the link above about the economic impact of last year's storm, and how the major employer, Georgia Pacific, closed its paper mill in the area, eliminating 12% of the jobs in relatively poor, rural county. Click thru.

People talk about the wind speed in hurricane, and winds of 140 MPH sustained, with higher gusts, sometimes as much as 30 percent higher, can do a lot of damage. But storm surge can do tremendous damage. Storm surge probably did destroy a lot of this area.

But residents believe the storm surge, with waves, hit 25 feet, based off of the water damage to some three story condos on the water. Some think the storm could have reached a category 5 at landfall, which means wind speeds of 157 mph or higher. It would make sense, they said, when four out of five homes are in ruins or floated away across the canal.

The storm was moving up the coast and made landfall around high tide. I'm not sure when high tide was in Keaton, but some of the weather reports I was watching mentioned it. Tidal range in Florida isn't a lot, on the order of a couple of feet most days, but it can contribute to the surge.

The winds were fairly well monitored at landfall, given the weather radar in the area. I, for one, was watching news coverage out of Tallahassee until shortly after that city lost power. Here is what the National Hurricane Center (NHC) had to say:

Based on NWS Doppler radar data, the eye of Helene has made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane in the Florida Big Bend region at about 11:10 PM EDT (0310 UTC) just east of the mouth of the Aucilla River. This is about 10 miles (15 km) west-southwest of Perry, Florida. Based on data from Air Force reconnaissance aircraft, the maximum sustained winds are estimated to be 140 mph (225 km/h) and the minimum central pressure is 938 mb (27.70 inches).

The image below is a satellite capture, in infrared, of Hurricane Helene from about 3 hours before landfall. The NHC considers a storm to have made landfall when the entire eye of the storm is over land, not when the leading edge of the eye hits land.

Also see my previous post on NC. 357 Magnum: Hurricane Helene - Aftermath in North Carolina