Gov. Roy Cooper declared a state of emergency Wednesday afternoon as North Carolina braces for the arrival of Hurricane Helene ahead of Duke’s Centennial Founders’ Day and Homecoming Celebration Weekend.
Rain is expected to clear by Friday afternoon in time for Duke’s concert featuring Ed Sheeran at 7:30 p.m. in Wallace Wade Stadium. The University said the event would go on “rain or shine” in a Tuesday morning email to ticket holders, noting that free ponchos will be available in the stadium.
Helene, which was still spinning in the Gulf of Mexico Wednesday evening, strengthened into a Category 1 storm that morning. The National Hurricane Center is projecting the storm to rapidly intensify into a Category 4 hurricane before making landfall in Florida Thursday.
North Carolina likely won’t see significant effects from Helene until Friday, when the storm’s outer edges are projected to pass over western and central areas of the state. Cooper cautioned residents to prepare for “flash flooding, numerous landslides, damaging debris flows, slope failures across steep terrain and riverine flooding” in portions of the state.
“Now is the time for North Carolinians to prepare, make sure emergency kits are up to date and pay attention to the weather alerts in your area,” he said.
The Raleigh area will likely see around 1.5 inches of rain Friday and could also face flash flooding and isolated tornadoes.
Some county school systems and community colleges across the state have announced closures in advance of the storm.
Duke’s Emergency Management website lists a number of resources in the event of extreme weather and advises community members to monitor local news and the DukeALERT website for the most updated information. Additional resources can be found on the National Weather Service’s Hurricane Preparedness website and Ready.gov’s Hurricanes page.
Florida is expected to bear the brunt of Helene’s impact, with potentially “catastrophic and deadly” storm surges across the state’s west coast that could reach up to 20 feet and wind gusts of up to 130 mph in some places.
The hurricane is forecasted to be one of the largest storms to hit the region in recent history, with only three other hurricanes since 1988 measuring larger than Helene’s greatest projected breadth. The governors of Florida, Georgia and South Carolina declared states of emergency alongside Cooper.
Helene is the eighth named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, which the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had predicted in May to be one of the busiest on record. It follows Hurricane Debby in August, which was downgraded to a tropical storm by the time it reached North Carolina but caused over 100,000 power outages, significant property damage and four deaths in the state.
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Zoe Kolenovsky is a Trinity junior and news editor of The Chronicle's 120th volume.