Hurricane Helene: Shocking videos of eerie storm surge, high winds and catastrophic landfall in Florida

Several videos circulating on social media attempt to capture the full extent of Hurricane Helene's damaging wrath in Florida.

Hurricane Helene made its catastrophic landfall as a dangerous and “life-threatening” Category 4 storm over Florida's Big Bend area late Thursday night, September 26. The National Hurricane Center eventually downvoted it to a tropical storm in a few hours as the impact eventually weakened.

(Left): Flying debris breaks loose in surveillance footage from Cape Coral, Florida. (Right): A wobbling camera shows an unsettling view near the Howard Frankland Bridge.(AccuWeather / Florida Highway Patrol Tampa)

“This is the fourth hurricane to make landfall on the Gulf Coast this year. This has happened only five other times in history,” meteorologist Stephanie Abrams of The Weather Channel said on CBS Mornings.

Heavy rains and ferocious winds came down hard with Helene making landfall about ten miles west of Perry, Florida, at 11:10 pm ET. The Hurricane Centre also estimated the maximum sustained winds at 140 miles per hour. The resulting damage rendered about 1.2 million Florida customers powerless early Friday morning, utility tracker PowerOutage.us noted.

But Florida wasn't alone in feeling the force of the formidable storm's natural wrath. 840,000 in Georgia, 552,000 in South Carolina, and 191,000 in North Carolina were left without electricity (and the number is growing). Despite the state of emergency declared across several US states, CBS News confirmed the fateful news that two people in Wheeler County, Georgia, succumbed to the savage hurricane. On the other hand, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis also announced in a late-night conference that at least one person's death was attributed to Helene in the Tampa area as a result of a traffic sign falling on a vehicle.

The heart-dropping scenario churned out some beyond-imagination visuals as bone-chilling and fear-inspiring videos poured out on social media.

Shocking videos of Hurricane Helene in Florida that will make your heart drop

Live views of Hurricane Helene from the International Space Station (ISS): While orbiting above Earth, the ISS captured the heart-rending views of the hurricane at 12:50 pm EDT on September 26. The previously streamed live footage shows the hurricane approaching the coast of Florida. A subsequently released NASA video captured at 2:25 pm EDT September 26 shows the Gulf coast of Florida facing the wrath of packing winds at over 120 miles over an hour.

The official SNS platforms of US authorities issued several caution warnings and continued urging people to stay off the roads and not drive during the hurricane.

The Tampa Police Department posted numerous snaps of streets with flooding or ponding waters. Several causeways and bridges were also closed.

“The Skyway Bridge and the Howard Frankland Bridge are both CLOSED due to high winds and storm surge. Motorists should stay off the highways,” Tampa's Florida Highway Patrol tweeted alongside an intense video. The wobbling camera near Howard Frankland Bridge offered a queasy view of the place struggling to stand still. Waves of flooding water crashed over what one can assume were once roads. The clip also shows multiple cars still carelessly making their way through the perilous pathway with nothing in sight but an excessively furious storm.

At the time of writing, the storm appeared to have calmed down, according to the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office's latest updates. Despite Hurricane Helene heading out north of them, authorities still warned people of the hazards. “If you don't have to go out, stay home,” they added

A previously shared video on their page drew a different picture. “Water beginning to come over walls off the beach in Indian Shores,” they captioned the post.

Storm chasers offered a grand share of harrowing visuals as well. Jaden Pappenheim posted distressing views of the raging storm almost eating up a house in Venetian Isles, a neighbourhood in St. Petersburg, Florida.

A Thursday late-night video of Tampa showed the Florida city completely submerged. With an AquaFence separating the flooded environs from Tampa General Hospital, Helene's floodwaters were at least held back from the medical sanctuary, preventing hospital operations from falling apart in such trying times. After the storm subsided, the hospital released pictures of the aftermath, confirming that the water-tight barrier they installed ahead of the landfall was capable of withstanding up to 15 feet of storm surge and it stood its ground against Hurricane Helene.

One of AccuWeather's videos on X/Twitter presented a near-apocalyptic vision of big power flashes going off as powerful wind gusts impacted tall-standing light poles in Perry, Florida, in the hours leading up to landfall.

Another video depicted floodwaters rendering roads impassable in the Fort Myers Beach area. Swamp buggies from the Lee County Sheriff's Office somehow made their way through the impenetrable paths in search of people who may need rescuing.

A different surveillance video captured the horror-inducing view of a possible tornado hitting Cape Coral as flying debris broke loose early Thursday.