Power outages as Hurricane Isaias makes landfall in Florida
Hurricane Isaias lashed the US Gulf Coast with heavy rain and strong winds today, as the Category 2 storm made landfall in northwestern Florida, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) says.
“Isaias makes landfall near Destin, Florida,” the NHC’s latest update said. “Life-threatening storm surge impacting Gulf coast as dangerous hurricane conditions and flash flooding spread inland.”
Coastal communities saw mandatory evacuations and shuttered businesses as Isaias became the first hurricane of an Atlantic season that began in June, held in check by a historic El Niño phenomenon that typically spurs more major storms in the Pacific.
In Pensacola, about 80km west of Destin in Florida, an AFP reporter witnessed winds rip the roofs from some homes and businesses, snapping tree branches as the power went out.
“Things are flying really fast and I’ve never seen wind this fast before, so it’s intense, it’s scary,” Jonathan Ramos, a 40-year-old government employee, told AFP at his hotel in Pensacola, where the power went out.
“I don’t recommend people coming down here for fun to do this.”
More than 300,000 customers in Florida and 200,000 in Alabama were without power today, according to poweroutage.us.
Earlier in the day, caravans of repair trucks rolled through the cities of Pensacola and Navarre to staging areas in preparation for power outages, AFP reporters on the scene said. Water services to buildings were suspended.
The NHC said Isaias was packing maximum sustained winds of 169km/h, with storm surges expected along the Gulf Coast, from the mouth of the Mississippi River south of New Orleans to Florida’s Suwannee River.
Forecasters expected Isaias to slam into the western Florida panhandle at or near major hurricane strength before weakening over land.
Fuelled by record-warm Gulf waters heated by climate change, it underwent rapid intensification and is the first hurricane to strike the US mainland since Milton in 2024.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis told a press briefing earlier today that “we’ve got a massive amount of supplies and personnel ready to respond once the storm hits”.
US President Donald Trump cancelled his visit to Saturday’s college football game between the University of Georgia and the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Alabama because of the hurricane.
Mandatory evacuation orders are in effect in several Florida counties, but impacts are expected across a swathe of the southeastern United States, with hurricane-force winds up to 160km/h inland.
A storm surge combined with the tide is expected to flood normally dry areas, with the NHC warning water could reach as high as 2.7m around the Alabama-Florida border. Heavy rainfall could trigger flash flooding and push rivers over their banks.
Two airports in northwestern Florida have suspended operations.
Late arrival
Isaias’ late arrival this season is largely because of an El Niño of historic strength.
El Niño, the warm phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, creates strong vertical wind shear over the Atlantic that tends to tear storms apart.
“We have been seeing basically nearly record-strong shear throughout the Atlantic Basin this year, and that is consistent with what we’d expect to see with a strong El Niño event,” Michael Fischer, of the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science, told AFP.
In the Pacific, it has the opposite effect, weakening shear and allowing storms to grow. The Pacific has already produced several hurricanes this year, some of which reached maximum Category 5 strength.
“Sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico are in record territory because of fossil fuel-driven climate change,” Marc Alessi, a climate scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, told AFP. “Isaias was able to tap into all of that energy in the ocean to develop into a major hurricane.”
According to an analysis by non-profit Climate Central, waters in the Gulf of Mexico are about 1.4C above the pre-industrial average, and Isaias “formed over waters that were 600 times more likely to be that temperature because of climate change”, the group’s vice-president for science Kristina Dahl told AFP.
The storm surge will also be worsened because climate change has raised sea levels by about 0.17m in this region, so the surge acts on a higher base, Dahl said. Heavy rainfall is also linked to warming since warmer oceans and atmosphere allow hurricanes to carry more moisture.
Isaias has disrupted oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico, with platforms and rigs evacuated.
As of today, about 71% of the region’s oil production had been temporarily halted, taking nearly 1.5 million barrels a day off the market, according to the Marine Minerals Administration. About 59% of gas production was also suspended.
- AFP