Charter Communications is blaming a rainstorm – likely fallout from Hurricane Helene – as the cause of a widespread internet outage affecting Smithfield and surrounding areas.

Charter’s Spectrum internet service went down shortly before 8 a.m. and as of 3:30 p.m. hadn’t been restored. Charter, in a 3:15 p.m. statement, said cable lines damaged by the storm were likely the cause of the outage.

Charter did not give an estimate of how many Hampton Roads customers were affected, nor an estimated time for repairs.

Hurricane Helene made landfall over the Florida panhandle on Sept. 26 as a Category 4 storm with winds up to 140 mph. By Friday afternoon, the storm had killed at least 35 people across four states as it weakened to a tropical depression and moved westward over Kentucky, according to Associated Press reporting. While southeastern Virginia never found itself in Helene’s projected cone, the outer bands of the cyclone were over Hampton Roads as of just before 2 p.m., according to satellite imagery from the National Hurricane Center’s website.

The National Weather Service has issued a tornado watch for Smithfield through 6 p.m. Isle of Wight County is under a flash flood warning through 7:15 p.m.