The hurricane did pop up out of nowhere. Still, these idiots don't understand that it formed from the Central American gyre off the coast of Honduras instead of the traditional tropical wave coming out of West Africa. Helene underwent rapid intensification, too. It wasn't even a hurricane until three days ago and only intensified yesterday. Yesterday morning, it was a Cat 2, and by yesterday afternoon, it was a Cat 4. It took only around eight hours to intensify. So meteorologically speaking, yes, it did kind of just showed up on radar.
Even though Helene is incredibly destructive and deadly, it's also a really fascinating hurricane. It has many similarities to Michael in 2018 and Idalia last August.