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.

Hurricane Helene continued to strengthen as it neared Florida's gulf coast Thursday. The storm is expected to bring historic flooding to the Southeast, with potential storm surges of up to 20 feet. Manuel Bojorquez has the latest from Tampa Bay.

The Sunshine Skyway Bridge is closed, as of just before 2 p.m. on Thursday, as outer bands from Hurricane Helene, now a Category 3 hurricane churning in the Gulf of Mexico on its way to landfall in the Big Bend area, bear down on the Tampa Bay area with tropical storm-force winds.