LIVE UPDATES: Hurricane Helene is now CATEGORY 4 making landfall

Hurricane Helene has intensified and is now a major Category 3 hurricane with winds up to 120 mph as it continues on a path that will bring the monster storm into Florida’s Big Bend region with a potentially “unsurvivable“ 20-foot storm surge, catastrophic hurricane-force winds and flooding rain later on Thursday night or early Friday morning. Nearly the entire state of Florida is under some sort of tropical weather alert, with Tropical Storm Warnings extending hundreds of miles inland into Georgia and the Carolinas, including Atlanta. The National Hurricane Center (NHC) says that because of Hurricane Helene’s massive size, there is a significant risk of a life-threatening storm surge along the entire west coast of the Florida Peninsula, as well as Florida’s Big Bend region. “A catastrophic and deadly storm surge is likely along portions of the Florida Big Bend coast, where inundation could reach as high as 20 feet above ground level, along with destructive waves,“ the NHC