Thursday night at 11:10, category 4 Hurricane Helene landed at Florida's Big Bend region, just east of the mouth of the Aucilla River and 45 miles east-southeast of Tallahassee, Florida. It was the strongest hurricane ever to land in that area.
Winds at 140 miles per hour were ripping apart things in their path. Moving northeast across Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia, the storm brought "catastrophic, historic flooding," according to the National Hurricane Center. By the time it was no longer a tropical storm, Helene had left at least 94 dead and more yet to be accounted for.
Although it is still too early to calculate the total value of property lost, the damage was vast. Early estimates made before landfall diverged widely. Moody's did a broad estimate of commercial properties in many parts of Florida that might have been in the storm's path, but most of which weren't. About 162,000 CRE assets with a greater than 50% chance of facing wind speeds of at least 50 miles per hour, a velocity at which some damage is likely, had an estimated total value of $425.9 billion.
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