Hurricane Isaias made landfall along Florida’s western panhandle on Friday evening as a Category 2 hurricane with sustained winds of 110 miles per hour, life-threatening storm surge, severe flooding, and possible tornadoes across the US Gulf Coast.
Florida, Alabama, and Georgia have all declared states of emergency. Mandatory evacuations were ordered for coastal communities across Florida and Alabama, with Alabama Governor Kay Ivey ordering all non-residents, tourists, and visitors to leave affected counties immediately.
Florida Senator Rick Scott posted a blunt warning on social media: “DO NOT WAIT! Get out NOW!” The National Hurricane Center warned of life-threatening storm surge that could bring up to nine feet of flooding in some areas along the Gulf Coast. Hurricane-force winds extended up to 35 miles from Isaias’s centre, with tropical storm-force winds reaching as far as 205 miles out.
After making landfall in Florida, the storm is forecast to push through Alabama and into the Tennessee Valley over the weekend.The power impact was immediate. More than 350,000 customers lost electricity in Florida and another 170,000 in Alabama before the storm had even fully made landfall, according to PowerOutage.us. Approximately 8,000 Georgia customers also reported outages ahead of the storm’s arrival further inland.
Melissa Watson, a Florida-based meteorologist at the National Weather Service, told the BBC that people who remained behind should have multiple ways to receive tornado and storm surge warnings and be prepared to move to higher ground quickly.
“We want people to remain inside and safe while the hurricane is moving through,” she said.
Not everyone left. John Guoth, a Navarre, Florida resident, told the BBC he and his wife chose to stay despite the rest of his street having evacuated. He said he had secured everything that could move, put his ducks and chickens in the bathroom, and weighed down his boats and trailers. “It’s a hurricane, we get them all the time,” he said.
Isaias carries a broader significance beyond the immediate emergency. It is the first Atlantic hurricane of the 2026 season and the first in more than 30 years that a named Atlantic storm did not form until October, a delay attributed to El Niño conditions in the Pacific suppressing storm development earlier in the season.
The storm is one of three currently affecting North America, alongside two separate systems hitting Mexico and Southern California.
