Tallahassee, United States (AFP) – Hurricane Helene was downgraded to a “strong” Category 2 hurricane on Friday, hours after it slammed into the southeastern US coast as a Category 4 storm, US forecasters said.

“Hurricane Helene is now a strong category 2 hurricane,” the National Weather Service in Florida’s capital Tallahassee posted on X, after the latest National Hurricane Center bulletin put maximum sustained windspeeds caused by the storm at 110 miles (175 kilometres) per hour, downgrading it on the five-level Saffir-Simpson scale.

sw/cwl

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