Duke Energy staged 8,000 crew members to respond to outages ahead of the storm, with about 4,000 in the Villages that can respond around Tampa Bay or further north, as needed. Helene is expected to pass Tampa Bay over the course of Thursday afternoon and make landfall in the Big Bend region by the evening.

More than 17,000 Tampa Bay customers are without power as of 4 p.m. Thursday, according to tracking from Tampa Electric Company and Duke Energy. The energy companies are expecting widespread outages throughout the region and state as Hurricane Helene intensifies.