Hurricanes Milton and Helene
2024 Hurricane Season Listening Sessions
Congress has allocated more than $100 billion in emergency aid to address the extensive damage caused by hurricanes Helene and Milton. Your input is critically needed by federal agencies to help them direct significant amounts of federal funding coming to the region towards the highest priority community recovery needs. The Central Florida listening session was held on January 30, 2025. ​​
Southwest Florida
CHNEP and the Southwest Florida Regional Planning Council (SWFRPC) co-hosted the Southwest Florida listening session that was held on February 19, 2025, and included representatives from Sarasota, Charlotte, Lee, Glades, Hendry and Collier Counties. Videos from the listening session can be found on the CHNEP YouTube channel and notes summarizing the discussion are available below.
There is still time to submit recovery project proposals for federal funding! Download the Project Sheet below to fill in with your recovery needs and email to Jennifer Hecker, Margaret Wuerstle, and Greg Vaday (jhecker@chnep.org; mwuerstle@swfrpc.org; GVaday@eda.gov) by 5pm on Friday, March 14, 2025.
Hurricane Helene
​Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida's Big Bend area near Perry, Florida at around 11:10 p.m. EDT on Thursday, Sept. 26, 2024 as a large Category 4 storm whose wind forces extended all the way down the west coast to Ft. Myers, FL and storm surge extended all the way down to Naples, FL. Accompanying the storm was heavy rainfall and tornado activity. After moving through Florida, it went through Georgia before reaching the Tennessee/North Carolina border, where as much as two feet of rain caused catastrophic flooding in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
USA Today
Click on the boxes below to access maps and data related to Hurricane Helene:
Hurricane Milton
​Hurricane Milton, the second-most intense Atlantic hurricane ever recorded over the Gulf, behind only Hurricane Rita in 2005, made landfall at 8:30 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, October 9, 2024 with 120 mph winds on Siesta Key on the west coast of Florida, less than two weeks after Hurricane Helene. The storm rapidly intensified prior to landfall, where it strengthened 95 mph in 24 hours over the exceptionally warm Gulf. It brought 5 inches per hour at times in some areas and huge storm surge along the west coast of Florida - reaching a couple feet higher than Helene's surge in some areas such as in Punta Gorda, FL. Milton also produced a record 126 tornado warnings, with at least 38 tornadoes reported across Florida and 3 EF-3 very large strong tornadoes confirmed.
USA Today
Click on the boxes below to access maps and data related to Hurricane Milton:
High Water Mark Survey
The CHNEP gathered time-sensitive water level data from Hurricanes Milton and Helene to create a publicly available map of water levels during each hurricane. It is critical to document this information in order to improve future storm surge and flood forecasting.
High Water Mark Survey Photos submitted to CHNEP:
Federal Recovery Resources
At the last CHNEP Management Conference meetings of the Management and Policy Committees, the federal Interagency Recovery Coordination (IRC) team came to directly hear CHNEP member comments about how the federal government could assist Hurricanes Milton and Helene Recovery Efforts.
CHNEP synthesized the Committees' comments and is working with the IRC to gather their written responses to these identified recovery needs. Once received, these responses as well as contact information for members to personally follow up with the IRC will be available here as well as to the CHNEP Policy and Management committee web pages.
