[Source: Reuters]

Driving rain flooded roadways and closed airports in Florida as an intensifying Hurricane Helene marched toward the state’s panhandle region, bringing the threat of a potentially deadly storm surge to much of the coastline.

The storm became a major Category 4 hurricane on Thursday with sustained winds near 130 mph (209 kph), the National Hurricane Center said, and was expected to continue gaining power. Helene was forecast to make landfall around 11 p.m. EDT (0300 GMT Friday) in Florida’s Big Bend region, Florida officials said.

Officials pleaded with residents in the path of the storm to heed mandatory evacuation orders or face life-threatening conditions. Helene’s surge – the wall of seawater pushed on land by hurricane-force winds – could rise to as much as 20 feet (6.1 meters) in some spots, as tall as a two-story house, the center’s director, Michael Brennan, said in a video briefing.

The hurricane was about 130 miles (209 km) west of Tampa, Florida, as of 5 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT), the center said.

Strong rain bands were whipping parts of coastal Florida, and rainfall had already lashed Georgia, South Carolina, central and western North Carolina and portions of Tennessee. Atlanta, hundreds of miles north of Florida’s Big Bend, was under a tropical storm warning.

In Pinellas County, which sits on a peninsula surrounded by Tampa Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, roads were already filling with water before noon. Officials warned the storm’s impact could be as severe as last year’s Hurricane Idalia, which flooded 1,500 homes in the low-lying coastal county.

Videos posted on the county’s social media site showed some swamped beachside roads and water rising over boat docks.

Airports in Tampa, Tallahassee and St. Petersburg all suspended operations on Thursday.

Governor Ron DeSantis warned North Florida residents to flee before time ran out.

Helene is expected to remain a full-fledged hurricane as it rolls through the Macon, Georgia, area on Friday, forecasters said. It could bring 12 inches (30.5 cm) of rain or more, potentially devastating the state’s cotton and pecan crops, which are in the middle of harvesting season.

After making landfall across the Florida coast, Helene is expected move more slowly over the Tennessee Valley on Friday and Saturday, the NHC said.