Chief Meteorologist Patrick Rockey's First Warning Forecast
While it's been unusually quiet in the tropics for the past few months, Helene may change all that.
The tropical storm is expected to intensify quickly into a hurricane and make landfall on the Florida Gulf coast as a major Category 3 storm.
Because this is a big storm and will get even wider after landfall, we could feel the impact of the storm twice in our region.
As Helene moves into the western Carolinas on Friday, we could see showers and thunderstorms. It's even possible some isolated tornadoes could develop.
Helene will dump a whole lot of rain in the Blue Ridge before pushing into the Midwest this weekend.
Eventually, we expect what's left of the storm to get picked up by a cold front and push more rain our way early next week. Stay tuned!
