(Reuters) -More than 350,000 homes and businesses in Florida were without power on Thursday as hurricane Helene looked poised to make landfall in the state's Big Bend region, according to data from PowerOutage.us.
Hurricane Helene churned toward Florida's Panhandle region, bringing the threat of a potentially deadly storm surge to much of the coastline.
Helene has intensified into an extremely dangerous Category 4 hurricane, and it is nearing the northeast Gulf coast, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said on Thursday. It was expected to make landfall this evening.
The utility company with the largest number of customers affected was Florida Power & Light Company, which had 137,897 clients without power.
It was followed by Duke Energy (NYSE:DUK), with 133,948 customers cut off in the state.
"We anticipate landfall will bring the most significant damage to our infrastructure in the Panhandle and Big Bend area that will likely cause extended outage durations," Todd Fountain, Duke Energy storm director, said in a statement.
Here are the major outages by utility in Florida:
Power Companies Outages
Florida Power & Light Company 137,897
Tampa Electric 58,430
Lee County Electric Coop 8,074
Duke Energy 133,948
Withlacoochee River Electric Coop 12,140
Total 366,035