FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Massive Hurricane Helene crashed into Florida’s sparsely populated Big Bend region, bringing storm surge and high winds across the state’s Gulf Coast communities before ripping into southern Georgia.

Hurricane Helene weakened to a tropical storm over the Carolinas with maximum sustained winds of 45 mph (75 kph) by mid-morning Friday, the National Hurricane Center said.

The storm will continue to weaken as it continues to move north across Georgia. At 11 a.m., Helene was centered about 30 miles (50 kilometers) southwest of Bryson City, North Carolina, and about 105 miles (165 kilometers) north-northeast of Atlanta, moving north at 32 mph (52 kph), the hurricane center in Miami reported.

Helene wobbled as it approached Florida’s coast late Thursday before making landfall near the mouth of the Aucilla River with maximum sustained winds estimated at 140 mph (225 kph). That location was only about 20 miles (32 kilometers) northwest of where Hurricane Idalia came ashore last year at nearly the same ferocity and caused widespread damage.

Evacuations were underway Friday morning in areas of Western North Carolina. The Haywood County Sheriff’s Office west of Asheville said it was helping with evacuations in in Cruso, Clyde, Canton and lower-lying parts of Waynesville.

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Confirmed Deaths and Damage Reports

So far, The Associated Press has confirmed seven deaths caused by Helene.

Gov. Ron DeSantis confirmed two in Florida. One person was hit by a falling sign in Tampa’s Ybor City neighborhood and another was killed when a tree fell onto a home in Dixie County.

In Wheeler County, Georgia, two people died during an apparent tornado, a local sheriff said.

Officials confirmed that two others were killed when trees fell on their homes in Anderson County, South Carolina, and Charlotte, North Carolina.

And North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper confirmed a second storm-related death resulting from a car accident on a flooded road in Catawba County, North Carolina.

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Impact on Transportation and Infrastructure

Airports in Florida that closed due to Hurricane Helene will be reopened Friday, Secretary of the Florida Department of Transportation Jared Perdue said. That includes airports in Tampa, St. Petersburg, Lakeland and Tallahassee.

At Orlando International Airport, Florida’s busiest, there had been 77 flight cancellations in the past 24 hours, as of Friday morning, according to FlightAware.

Airports in Atlanta and Charlotte, North Carolina, remained open Friday morning but were reporting large numbers of cancellations and heavy delays. By 8 a.m., nearly 300 flights to or from Charlotte, a major hub for American Airlines, had been canceled. Nearly 400 more, to or from Charlotte, were delayed, according to FlightAware.

At the larger Atlanta airport, more than 130 flights were canceled and more than 180 delayed, according to FlightAware.

On Friday morning, inspectors were out examining bridges and causeways along Florida’s Gulf Coast to get them back open to traffic quickly, Perdue said.

In addition, 2,000 miles (3,200 kilometers) of roadway across Florida have been cleared of debris, Perdue said during a news conference in Tallahassee.

“Some of the causeways were underwater, so we have to inspect them and make sure they are safe to pass,” Perdue said. “We had a lot of storm surge up and down the west coast. We had a lot of roads underwater.”

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Widespread Power Outages

As of 9:15 a.m. Friday, some 3.2 million people across Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Tennessee were without power, according to poweroutage.us.

Most of the outages, were in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina — each with more than 1 million outages.

Almost 45% of homes and businesses in South Carolina were without power Friday morning. Whole counties were without electricity as winds gusted to near hurricane force. Trees or other debris blocked every major road leading into Greenwood, a city of about 22,000 people about 65 miles (105 kilometers) west of Columbia, Greenwood County officials said on social media.

Crews of linemen were stationed across the region, ready to begin the process of restoring power as soon as the winds from Helene died down.

Storm Surge and Flooding

Flooding along Florida’s coast began well before Hurricane Helene made landfall, with rapidly rising waters reported from as far south as Fort Myers on the state’s Gulf Coast.

Early Friday, sheriff’s officials in Hillsborough County, where Tampa is located, were using a large ATV to rescue people who were stranded by rising waters.

In Cedar Key, an old Florida-style island off the Gulf Coast, many homes, motels and businesses were flooded. Not even the city’s fire rescue building was spared.

“It actually blew out the storm panels on the front doors. Blew out one of the breakaway walls on the back and two entry doors,” the agency posted online. “It appears that we had about 6 feet or better of water inside.”

Storm surge is the level at which sea water rises above its normal level.

Much like the way a storm’s sustained winds do not include the potential for even stronger gusts, storm surge doesn’t include the wave height above the mean water level.

Surge is also the amount above what the normal tide is at a time, so a 15-foot storm surge at high tide can be far more devastating than the same surge at low tide.

Measuring Hurricane Strength

The most common way to measure a hurricane’s strength is the Saffir-Simpson Scale that assigns a category from 1 to 5 based on a storm’s sustained wind speed at its center, with 5 being the strongest.