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WRAL meteorologists are tracking Tropical Storm Helene in the western Caribbean and its potential to impact North Carolina. The storm's projected path shows impact to central and western North Carolina later this week. Any potential impact to our area would likely come Friday and Saturday.

Helene now a hurricane; expected to intensify into Category 4 storm

Here's a tropical update from the Wral severe weather center as of the 11 a.m. advisory from the national hurricane center Helene is a hurricane and it's forecast to become a major hurricane category three by eight o'clock, Thursday morning and then roughly around eight or nine Thursday evening making landfall as a category three storm on Florida's big bend. You'll notice that the track of the storm it's going toward the west, but we'll feel some effects from it here at home and we'll get to that here in just a little bit. But now that it's forecast to be a cat three at landfall in Florida, this would make the ninth major hurricane to make landfall in that state within the past 20 years. And you see there have been quite a few clustered within the past 6 to 7 years last year at Dalia 2022 there was Ian Michael and Irma a lot of high name storms there. Uh This one certainly gonna be, uh, one that's, uh, talked about for quite some time. You can see that in between Mexico and Cuba, there's a lot of warm water and that warmth extends into the depths of the ocean acting as hurricane fuel over the next two days. By the time it gets here, we're looking at a weaker storm but still plenty of wind, especially in the mountains here at home are wind gusts about 20 to 40 MPH. Rain totals here about 1 to 2 inches. But man, it gets pretty dangerous in the mountains. You're looking at some rain totals in excess of 10 inches in the mountains of North Carolina in the upstate of South Carolina. Keep it up with Wral for updates on the storm anytime on wral.com and on the Wral news app.

2024 Atlantic hurricane season update

Path of Helene as of Sept. 25, 2024 at 5 p.m.

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