Hurricane Helene – The Story

The Blowout
On October 25th, 2024, Mike and I (Steven) decided to chase Major Hurricane Helene in the Big Bend region of Florida. In my Subaru and Mike in SCOUT-1, we began our trek south from Huntsville, AL, headed for Marianna, FL about 65 miles to the west of Tallahassee. However, we encountered a setback in Gardendale, AL just north of Birmingham. Mike’s tire pressure sensor light came on. Just as he called to ask about it, I noticed his tire was flat. Before he could react or I could tell him that his tire was flat, it ripped off the rim and bee-lined straight for my car. Luckily, I was paying attention and did not hit the tire as it traveled across the interstate. Mike immediately pulled over and we began the process of changing the tire and calling tire shops to see if they had a tire in stock. However, this was just shy of 7pm and most places were closing down or already closed for the day. As we had no other option, Mike decided that he would just use his spare for the duration of the chase and arranged to pick up a tire on the 27th from a shop in Dothan. We continued our drive south and arrived at our hotel several hours later to sleep for a few hours and get up the next morning to position ourselves for landfall.

Before Landfall
We woke up early on the morning of the 26th and began scoping out areas to ride out Helene. We ultimately settled on a gas station in Crawfordville, at the intersection of US Highway 98 and US Highway 319. We knew that we would be above the storm surge as it came in and there really was nowhere else to sit safely close to the coast. That intersection was also great because Mike brought a chainsaw and we had a north option to escape should things get too hairy. We arrived at our destination by late morning and began the hours-long waiting game for landfall. As we were waiting, we had the opportunity to speak with many local and state agencies. We met several Florida Highway Patrol (FHP) officers as well as a few of the Wakulla County Sheriff Deputies. They were very friendly to us all day and made sure that we understood the risks of staying in the area. As the day progressed, more and more chasers began to park at the gas station under the awning with us.

Repositioning
As night began to fall and landfall was imminent, we were kicked out by an officer with FHP and told that we had to go north out of there. At this point, we were already experiencing strong tropical storm force winds and trees were beginning to fall as well as power lines. We began driving north and looking for another place to sit and wait for landfall. This proved to be extraordinarily difficult with the amount of trees that are in the Big Bend region. While we were driving, we came across a car that had driven into a downed tree. The other chasers and I rushed to the vehicle to see if it was occupied and to ensure there were no injuries. I could hear voices inside the car so I attempted to open the door and knock on the wind to check on the occupant(s). There was a single occupant in the vehicle but he sustained no injuries and was waiting for his son to come pick him up so they could get out of there. I offered to stay with him until his son arrived, but he said that we needed to get out of there and keep ourselves safe. As we continued to drive, we were unable to locate any other areas for us to intercept the hurricane so we drove to the southeast side of Tallahassee to regroup.

Landfall
The other chasers and I began to look at radar and satellite imagery of Helene and noticed that the hurricane had made a right turn and was going to make landfall near the town of Perry, FL. I had been to Perry to intercept Hurricane Idalia in 2023, and I knew the road was blanketed with 60-70 feet tall pine trees and it was not safe to attempt driving into the city. We continued looking at the map and decided to drive east to a Dollar General in the community of Waukennah, FL along US Highway 27. We made it there shortly before the power went out in the area and winds began ramping up. We experienced several hurricane force wind gusts despite still being surrounded by trees, which slowed winds down considerably due to the frictional force they create. Helene continued a more easterly march across the Big Bend and so the Twister Fisters and other chasers decided to bail for I-10 and attempt an eyewall/eye intercept. We drove a couple miles east to US Highway 19 that connects US 27 to I-10. As we drove north on US 19, we experienced multiple wind gusts nearing 100mph (160kph), and multiple trees falling around us. This made for a very tense drive to I-10 in both vehicles. As we made it to I-10, radar imagery showed us being in the very intense eyewall with winds well in excess of 100mph just above the surface. We continued eastbound on I-10, we were seeing downed trees on both sides of the interstate but none of them were blocking the roadway enough to cause traffic issues…yet.

So. Many. Trees.
As we rounded a corner, we were met with standstill traffic and downed trees as far as you could see, which isn’t very far at 2am in the pitch black. Once we were stopped, Mike and I both got out of our vehicles to assist with clearing trees. We were about 3 miles from an exit that would take us north and get us away from hurricane damage and back home to Huntsville in a timely manner, at least that is what we thought. There was only one other chaser there with a chainsaw and his chain slung off shortly after starting to clear trees. The real issue is that we were barely inside the eye and the eyewall was quickly approaching and 40-50 feet tall trees lined the interstate all the way to our exit. We worked as quickly as possible to clear 1 lane enough so that everyone could drive through and we could make it to exit. However our fastest was not fast enough with just 1 chainsaw. As we entered the southern eyewall again, we could hear the relentless cracking and crashing of trees in the pitch-black, each sound a sharp reminder of the chaos around us. We continued pressing on clearing tree after tree for nearly 3 miles. It took us upwards of 2 hours just to get one lane partially opened with one chainsaw. But hey, it was over and we were on our northbound route out of there, right? Wrong.

Getting Out
We made it maybe a mile before encountering a tree too large for our chainsaw and we were forced to turn around and try to head back west towards Tallahassee. Here is another issue we encountered, no one with a chainsaw was working on the westbound lanes prior to our arrival so we were starting from scratch basically. If you think things aren’t about to get even worse, you would be sadly mistaken. Mike calls me to inform me that he is running extremely low on gas and isn’t sure he can make it back to Tallahassee for gas. If my memory serves me right, there were more trees on the westbound side than there were on the eastbound side. By 4 or 5 a.m., we had been awake for nearly 24 hours. We were exhausted, wet, sticky, and we were miserable. This is when things change. A tree service came up behind us with larger chainsaws and more manpower than we could gather up on the other side. They were cutting so fast that we just couldn’t keep up and eventually decided to pull to the side of the interstate and sleep for a couple of hours because neither of us could hold our eyes open anymore and the adrenaline was steadily decreasing. After sleeping for a couple hours, we woke up and, to our surprise, the road was cleared enough to not even have to slow down when passing trees.

The Home Stretch
Despite Mike being low on gas, we were able to make it to an open gas station and both of us filled up before making our way north to get his new tire and get home. We made it to Dothan around 11am on the 27th, we ate at Waffle House, which is a great meal after not having any hot food for about 36 hours, and Mike had his new tire put on. The tire shop was very surprised when Mike informed them that his spare tire had ridden out a Category 4 hurricane and lasted 600 miles. Unfortunately for me, my debit card had been compromised and I had to stop off in Talladega County at my local bank to get a new card. So that delayed me in getting home, but I did get to see some family that I hadn’t seen in a few months. Finally, after nearly 1,000 miles, countless obstacles, and almost no sleep, we made it back to Huntsville. Exhausted but relieved, we could finally rest and reflect on one of the most challenging chases we’d ever undertaken.