Hurricane Isaias makes landfall near Destin – over 500,000 without power
The Atlantic season's first hurricane came ashore in Florida's Panhandle as a Category 2 storm, then weakened. Power failed widely in Florida, Alabama and Georgia.
Archive image · Photo: Redditaddict69 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped and resized)
Hurricane Isaias made landfall on Friday evening near Destin in the western Florida Panhandle. According to the National Hurricane Center, the storm was a Category 2 at that point with sustained winds of about 170 km/h, after briefly reaching Category 3 on Friday. It soon weakened to Category 1, CBS News reported, with sustained winds of about 145 km/h overnight. A gust of around 164 km/h was measured at Pensacola City Hall, according to AccuWeather. Isaias is the first hurricane of the 2026 season – according to NOAA data, the Atlantic season's first hurricane has not formed this late in 121 years.
More than 500,000 customers in Florida, Alabama and Georgia were without power overnight, according to AccuWeather, including over 370,000 in Florida and about 210,000 in southern Alabama. In Pensacola trees were toppled, streetlights shattered and part of a hotel roof was torn off. Storm surge exceeded 1.5 metres in Panama City. Mobile, Alabama, imposed an overnight curfew, and most flights were grounded at several Panhandle airports. Florida deployed about 5,000 National Guard members. There were no initial reports of deaths.
The NHC expects Isaias to be downgraded to a tropical storm by Saturday afternoon. Between 100 and 200 millimetres of rain are forecast from southern Alabama to southwestern Georgia, with tornadoes possible on Saturday as far as Georgia and the Carolinas. Governor Ron DeSantis had warned that people should hide from the wind but run from the water. President Donald Trump scrapped his plan to attend Saturday's Georgia–Alabama football game in Tuscaloosa so as not to disrupt the emergency response, WAKA reported.