Hurricane Isaias made landfall late Friday on the Florida Panhandle, lashing the Gulf Coast with heavy rains and howling winds that toppled trees, flooded coastal highways and left hundreds of thousands of people without power.
The storm’s eye came ashore about 8.30pm Central time near Destin, Florida, on a stretch of barrier islands with evacuated beach towns. Isaias landed as a category 2 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 105mph, and quickly dropped over the next half-hour to a category 1 storm with winds of 85mph.
By 1am Central time, Isaias degraded to a post-tropical cyclone, with winds of 65mph, the National Weather Service said.
Forecasters warned residents near the storm’s centre to expect powerful wind gusts, and to take shelter as though a tornado were approaching. Some 4 to 7 inches of rain had fallen across parts of the Florida Panhandle even before landfall, with downpours continuing to soak the area.
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The US National Hurricane Center warned against a life-threatening storm surge affecting the Gulf Coast as dangerous hurricane conditions and flash floods spread inland.
The hurricane is expected to cross Alabama and into the Tennessee Valley on the weekend, the agency added.
Nearly 380,000 people in Florida and more than 210,000 in Alabama were left without power as the storm hit shore, the website Poweroutage.us showed.
Isaias is the first Atlantic hurricane of the year, arriving late in a relatively quiet season. It had been two years since a hurricane, Milton, made landfall in the mainland United States, striking the west coast of Florida near Sarasota in 2024.
Heavy flooding is expected to follow landfall. The western half of the Panhandle is likely to see the most dangerous conditions, with forecasters predicting that the water could rise 6 to 9 feet along the coast.
In some beach towns, visitors and tourists appeared to heed local officials’ warnings to evacuate or stay away, leaving hotels and restaurants empty during a typically busy season.
Flight disruptions have been mostly limited to smaller airports in the Panhandle through landfall, though airlines warned that could change as the storm moves inland.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times. Additional reporting: Reuters
