Hurricane Helene and Tallahassee (2024)

Helene made landfall on the Florida Big Bend coast near Perry, in Taylor County, around 11:10 p.m. EDT on September 26, 2024, southeast of Tallahassee and Leon County.

The National Weather Service office in Tallahassee places landfall just east of the mouth of the Aucilla River, about 10 miles west-southwest of Perry, with maximum sustained winds of 140 mph. The National Hurricane Center's tropical cyclone report puts it about 10 nautical miles southwest of Perry around 0310 UTC on September 27, the same moment, and calls Helene the strongest landfalling hurricane in the Florida Big Bend since reliable records began around 1900. Leon County's September 27 community brief said the storm made landfall about 30 miles to the county's southeast.

The two federal summaries differ slightly on pressure (938 versus 939 millibars), and the NWS page was written before the final NHC report, describing its surge estimates as preliminary, so both sets of figures are shown here.

Helene reached Tallahassee because it was very large, very fast and still strengthening at landfall, according to the NWS Tallahassee summary.

The Tallahassee office says Helene's maximum sustained winds rose 55 mph in the 24 hours before landfall, with a 34 millibar drop in central pressure. Citing NHC discussions, it says the wind field was at one point among the largest 10% of recorded storms and that the forward speed at landfall reached 24 mph, unusually fast for a landfalling major hurricane. The NWS also notes that Helene was the second major hurricane to strike the Florida Big Bend within 13 months, following Hurricane Idalia in late August 2023, and that unlike Idalia it was moving very quickly inland. Rain arrived early through what forecasters call a predecessor rainfall event, when an upper-level trough west of Helene funneled tropical moisture north well before landfall.

Leon County opened sandbag sites on September 23, ordered mobile home residents to evacuate and opened eight risk shelters, while FSU and FAMU closed their Tallahassee campuses.

On September 23, 2024, Leon County's preparedness release forecast up to 7 inches of rain and tropical storm to hurricane force winds, and listed five staffed sandbag sites, including the Northeast Branch Library on Thomasville Road, Apalachee Regional Park on Apalachee Parkway, Fred George Park and Fort Braden Community Park, with a limit of 15 sandbags per household. County Proclamation 2024-14 ordered residents of mobile and manufactured homes in Leon County to evacuate by 8:00 a.m. on Thursday, September 26.

The county and Leon County Schools opened seven risk shelters at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, September 25, and an eighth at Rickards High School at 9 a.m. on September 26, when a Hurricane Warning was in effect for Leon County with winds of up to 110 mph possible. Florida A&M University canceled classes from Wednesday, September 25 through Friday, September 27, and rescheduled its Saturday home football game to November 29, 2024. The FSU alert closed the Florida State University Tallahassee campus from 7 a.m. on September 25 until 11 p.m. on Sunday, September 29, with normal business expected to resume at 12:00 a.m. on Monday, September 30.

The highest gust the NWS lists for Leon County is 58.2 knots at the Tallahassee International Airport ASOS station on September 27, 2024, in its Helene gust table.

Leon County's community brief summed up the peak in the county as sustained winds of 40 mph, gusts up to 67 mph and approximately six inches of rain, and said the community had narrowly escaped the full brunt of the storm without the widespread, significant impacts seen to the east. A 58.2 knot gust works out to about 67 mph, so the county and NWS figures agree. Gusts in that range are below hurricane force, yet the county still asked residents to report damage through a Property Damage Assessment Form so it could pass consolidated impact information to state and federal agencies.

Helene dropped 4 to 8 inches of rain across much of the Tallahassee forecast area, and surge pushed nearly 7 feet of water onto the Wakulla County shore, the NWS reports.

The NWS summary reports flooding and washed-out back roads across the Apalachicola National Forest and parts of the Panhandle, with State Road 65 closed at one point. Radar estimated 10 to 18 inches over parts of the Apalachicola National Forest and nearby coast. The NHC report lists a Florida Panhandle maximum of 14.39 inches in Sumatra, west of Tallahassee.

The NHC report gives a slightly different Shell Point figure from a different instrument: a deployed USGS water level sensor at Shell Point Beach measured 6.53 feet above MHHW. It describes 5 to 7 feet of inundation from the Econfina River west to the Ochlockonee River, high water marks of 2 to 3 feet above ground in St. Marks, and minor to moderate structural damage in Wakulla, Franklin and Gulf counties. Far worse came to the southeast, where the NWS estimated inundation of at least 15 feet above normally dry ground at Keaton Beach, Steinhatchee and Dekle Beach.

Recovery in Leon County ran under a federal major disaster declaration for Florida, DR-4828-FL, which FEMA issued on September 28, 2024, for an incident period of September 23 to October 7, 2024.

Locally, Leon County's September 27 brief extended hours at the Woodville, Fort Braden and Miccosukee Rural Waste Service Centers for free yard debris drop-off starting September 28, kept one host shelter open at the Al Lawson Center and pointed residents to 2-1-1 Big Bend for relief resources. Nationally, the NHC report puts Helene's toll at least 250 U.S. fatalities and an estimated $78.7 billion in damage, the 7th costliest U.S. hurricane, with about 7.4 million customers losing power between September 26 and 28.

For Tallahassee's grid, the next step came that winter: a federal Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships award of $28.6 million from the Department of Energy, which the City of Tallahassee made public in a January 8, 2025 release, pays for hardening, smart distribution equipment and a battery at the Birmingham Street Substation in Griffin Heights.

Last verified: October 18, 2026. Helene facts on this page were re-read against the NWS Tallahassee event summary, the NHC tropical cyclone report, FEMA's DR-4828 page, four Leon County releases and Proclamation 2024-14, the FAMU and FSU closure notices, and the City's January 2025 grant release.