Tallahassee dodges Hurricane Helene's bullet

Tallahassee dodged the proverbial bullet and nearly missed the eyewall of Hurricane Helene – the storm's worst winds.

The Category 4 storm hit the Big Bend Thursday evening with a force the area has never experienced. The rain and wind left thousands without power.

Some of the hardest-hit counties — Taylor, Dixie, Suwannee, Madison — have been completely taken offline, according to a USA TODAY power outage tracker. Others, like Jefferson and Wakulla, were close behind, with almost but not all customers without power.

As of 7:41 a.m., the City of Tallahassee's power outage map reported 883 outages affecting 52,724 customers. Talquin Electric's outage map reported 17,080 outages in Leon County, affecting nearly 66% of its customers.

Here's the latest from the storm's path:

As dawn breaks, the extent of the rise in Big Bend and the damage become apparent

Dawn broke Friday morning over Florida's devastated and unexpected Big Bend region after Hurricane Helene hit the coast overnight.

The sharp smell of pine filled the air, an artifact of the hundreds of downed trees that lined the streets between St. Marks and Perry.

Emergency responders poured into the area, weaving around fallen trees along U.S. Highway 98 as sheriff's deputies, limiting access and patrolling for possible looting.

In the tiny community of St. Marks, about 20 miles south of Tallahassee, floodwaters had reached the front of the U.S. postal building, about a thirteenth of a mile from the St. Marks River, which flows into the Gulf a few miles downstream.

Some residents had planned to ride out the storm in their homes or aboard fishing boats moored in the marina. They could not immediately be reached Friday morning, although cell phone reception in the area was working.

'Lots of prayers': Taylor County residents begin to take stock

TAYLOR COUNTY — Outside Perry, longtime resident Donna Parker, 80, watched her grandson use a chainsaw to cut through a fallen palm tree.

Parker has lived in her home since 1985 and has never left because of a hurricane, the name of which she can still rattle off.

“The wind was bad. But I've had worse. We've really had worse. “I once felt like my whole front yard was a lake,” she said.