Add it all up, and what its residents intuited is undeniable: Tampa Bay just had its worst hurricane in a century. In living memory, plenty of major hurricanes have threatened this region before decimating other places, and plenty of unassuming tropical storms punched above their weight.

Hurricane Helene’s storm surge struck Florida fast and hard when it slammed into Gulf Coast communities near St. Petersburg

W hen Hurricane HELENE hit Florida’s Big Bend on September 26th it was hard to imagine that it would wreak the most devastation over 400 miles north in the Appalachian mountains. Officials report that flooding across the Southeast has killed about 200 people,