Transcript of Hurricane Helene now a dangerous Category 3 as it nears Florida

It's breaking news as we come on the air tonight. Hurricane Helene ravaging the coastline, the strongest on record ever to hit the Big Bend area of Florida. Coming ashore tonight as a monster Category 4 storm. Roughly a million customers have already lost power. Helene wielding a catastrophic storm surge along the way. This video in from Fort Myers Beach, where the Lee County Sheriff's Department and Marine deputies are preparing for rescues. Our team is on the ground across the storm zone, and we begin tonight with ABC's Victor Aquendo in Tallahassee, where the mayor is warning this could be the most intense and destructive storm in the city's history. Victor?

Juju, this is shaping up to be a catastrophic hurricane for Florida's Big Bend. Here in Tallahassee, the rain, it has been consistent for hours now, and the winds are starting to intensify. We know they'll get worse throughout the night, and that's what we have to watch so closely. They can become incredibly dangerous here in Tallahassee. Here's why. Florida's capital is known for its trees, its canopy roads. Just take a look above me here. With powerful winds like what Helene is packing, those trees can come crashing down on top of homes. They'll be blocking roads and bringing power lines down. We fully expect power outages to increase exponentially throughout the night. For the south of us, along the coastal areas of the Big Bend, it's the historic storm surge. That is so incredibly concerning. Officials say we could be seeing 20 feet of storm surge and say that would be unsurvivable. At this point, the time to evacuate, it has come and gone. It is hunkered downtime. And whether you are riding this out at home or in a shelter, if you are in Helene's path, racing for a long night ahead. Juju.

Victor, thank you. We go now to ABC's Chief Meteorologist, Ginger Z in St. Petersburg. Ginger.

You know, Juju, we've been seeing 60 to 70 miles per hour gust just rocking us here around Tampa Bay area. But we're in St. Pete, and for 18 hours, we took offshore flow, big time coastal flooding. The sea walls around us were breached. We can't even be near that right now. But obviously, we're still very gusty with a storm that is making landfall in the big bend or has that was so far from us. That's what's wild about this part of Florida. We did this in Adalia and the beaches outside of St. Petersburg, on that side where they're getting the onshore flow, Treasure Island up to Clearwater. That's where we're going to see that big damage happening here as the winds stay with us. Then we'll start to dwindle because by the time we wake up, 5:00, 6:00 AM, the center of the storm's up in northeast Georgia, Western South Carolina already. So it's moving really fast, screaming across the States. It's going to impact so many people.

Juju. Ginger, thank you. Joining me now is ABC meteorologist Samara Theodore. Samara, give us the latest.

All right. So this storm, Juju, has made landfall in Perry, Florida, about 10 miles southwest, south of Perry, Florida. And it came in as a category four storm, extremely strong. One thing I do want to note is it's moving so quickly to about 24 miles per hour to the north-north east. That's very fast for a hurricane. It's zooming into Southern Georgia. And by early morning before day break, places like Maken, middle Georgia, Bibb County, they're going to be seeing hurricane-forced winds as it continues on its trajectory towards places like Atlanta.

You've been tracking the storm for hours. How much further northwest is it headed?

Well, we're actually going to see this storm It's going to end its life towards the Tennessee Valley. So by tomorrow afternoon, heavy rainfall is battering places like Asheville, North Carolina, parts of Tennessee, not just any rainfall. This is going to be catastrophic and historic there. This is historic flash flooding that they're on the brink We have in places like Asheville, wherever you're seeing that pink on your screen, we have an extremely high risk for flash flooding. They could see totals up to 20 inches.

We know about the storm surge and the danger of flooding, but tell us about the power that this storm packs and how it ranks.

That's a great question, Juju. At 2:00 AM on Thursday morning, this was a Category 1 hurricane. By the afternoon, it was a Category 4. We saw this rapidly intensify. A lot of that attributed to the warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico, about 2 to 4 degrees above average. The barometric pressure, that is what we use to help rank on how strong a storm system is, dropped to 938, 938 millibars. So that means that it is now ranking in the top 10 strongest storms to make landfall in the state of Florida.

That's incredible. And we know that you'll be watching and tracking the storm every step of the way. So thank you, Samara, for joining us. And of course, we'll continue to follow the latest on the impact of the storm on ABC News Live, overnight, and on GMA in the morning.