4 dead, hundreds of thousands without power as Isaias sweeps inland

Four people were killed and nearly 900,000 customers were without power after Isaias roared ashore near Destin, Florida, late Friday night as a Category 2 hurricane, packing wind gusts over 100 mph and a storm surge of up to six feet.

A wind gust to 117 mph was recorded in Pensacola Beach, Florida, while nearby Santa Rosa Beach gusted to 116 mph. The town of Milton gusted to 115 mph in the Florida Panhandle, and several other gusts to 105 mph were clocked nearby — ferocious winds driving power outages across Florida, Alabama and Georgia as of early Saturday, according to poweroutage.us.

Florida officials were surveying damage across the area Saturday, as daylight revealed the extent of the destruction.

A woman was killed in Escambia County, near the Alabama border, after a large tree fell on her home and pinned her underneath it. On Saturday, a man died after using a generator in a garage without proper ventilation.
Another person was killed in Birmingham when a tree fell on a building early Saturday, city fire chief Cory D. Moon said. Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R) said in a statement that a second person in the state had been killed but did not provide details.

Soon after it crashed ashore, Isaias had weakened to a post-tropical, or nontropical, storm. The National Hurricane Center had discontinued all tropical alerts. The storm is forecast to continue making its way north through Alabama on Saturday before reaching Tennessee on Sunday and turning toward Kentucky.

While winds are expected to weaken, forecasters said they could still pose a risk across a broad swath of the south, along with heavy rain affecting an area from northeast Georgia into the western parts of the Carolinas. There is the possibility of flash flooding across much of the Southeast, as well as tornadoes.

Even as the storm weakened, the center of Isaias’s remnant circulation was located near Montgomery, Alabama, during the predawn hours Saturday. East of the center, moisture being swirled northward was still posing a flood risk. A couple of tornadoes could accompany Isaias’s remnants, too.

As the remnants sweep through the region, locally significant flooding is possible in northeast Georgia or the Appalachians and foothills in western parts of the Carolinas. That’s where low-level southeasterly flow will be pushed uphill by the terrain. Moisture will be squeezed out of air pockets as they rise, leading to torrential downpours. A few rain totals of 6 to 8 inches are likely.

A couple of tornadoes, meanwhile, are a concern in eastern Georgia and southern South Carolina. Some afternoon thunderstorms will blossom in the warm, humid air mass dragged north by Isaias.

And Isaias’s broader wind field, characterized by ample shear — changing winds with height — will encourage those thunderstorms to rotate.

On Sunday, scattered downpours will lift into the Mid-Atlantic, with a lingering tornado threat in eastern North Carolina and adjacent southeast Virginia.

After the storm’s impacts sweep through the southeast, heavy rain will spread across the Ohio Valley, Mid-Atlantic, Northeast and New England into Sunday. Rainfall amounts of a possible inch or two were forecast in the Mid-Atlantic, including D.C., with the highest amounts toward Norfolk.

These soaking conditions should depart by Monday.

There are no additional hurricanes or tropical storms forecast to develop in the Atlantic over the coming week, although a tropical storm watch has been issued for San Diego, near where Rachel is forecast to come ashore early Sunday. (Source: The Washington Post)