Hurricane Helene: What made the ‘monster’ storm so bad, so fast?

More than 160 people have been reported dead and hundreds more are missing after hurricane Helene hit Florida and moved through the U.S. southeast.

Several communities have been levelled, more than 160 people are dead and hundreds more missing after hurricane Helene swept through various parts of the U.S. southeast.

And experts say there were several factors that made the “monster” storm so destructive, so fast.

The destructive potential of the storm had climatologists and meteorologists bracing before it even formed. Barry Keim, a health climatologist at Louisiana State University, told Global News forecasters expected something to form days before it even happened.

“For Helene, everything was pointing toward a major storm forming down there and tracking up to the Gulf of Mexico and turning it into the monster that it did,” Keim said.

He said one cause for this is the sea surface temperatures in that region, with near-record temperatures only surpassed by 2023, creating a “breeding ground” for a powerful storm.

Global News chief meteorologist Anthony Farnell said temperatures in that region were well above 30 C, something to which climate change has contributed, he notes.

“That is fuel for these storms and that’s one of the reasons why it intensified so rapidly,” he said.

After formation, the storm made its way north and saw a rapid intensification — when maximum sustained winds in the storm increased at least 30 miles per hour in a 24-hour period — to the point it grew from a Category 1 to Category 4 storm in less than a day.