Winds whipped over 100 mph. Waters threatened hundreds of miles of Florida coast. And Philip Tooke managed to punch out a terse but frantic message from his phone as he sat riding out Hurricane Helene − not in his house, but on his boat.
“Lost power,” he wrote from St. Mark’s, 30 miles south of Tallahassee and 20 miles away from where Hurricane Helene hit the mouth of the Aucilla River. But, he says: "Still floating."
Tooke, 63, owner of a local seafood market, and his brother are spending the hurricane aboard their fishing boats.
