PENSACOLA, Fla. — Hurricane Isaias made landfall near Destin on the western Florida Panhandle on Friday night with maximum sustained winds near 105 mph, then weakened to a post-tropical cyclone over southern Alabama early Saturday, leaving hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses without power across the Southeast, the National Hurricane Center and news reports said.
At 4 a.m. CDT Saturday, the center of Isaias was about 25 miles south-southwest of Montgomery, Alabama, moving north at 14 mph with maximum sustained winds near 35 mph, the hurricane center said in its 15th advisory. All storm surge and tropical storm warnings have been discontinued, and Isaias is forecast to move across Alabama into the Tennessee Valley and dissipate on Sunday.
Forecasters warned that the flood threat was not over. The center expects 4 to 8 inches of rain across southern Alabama, the Florida Panhandle and Big Bend, and southwest Georgia through the weekend, with local totals up to 15 inches, and said considerable flash flooding and landslides are possible in the Southern Appalachians. A tornado risk persisted Saturday across parts of the eastern Florida Panhandle, Georgia and the Carolinas.
More than 400,000 customers were without power in Florida, just over 300,000 in Alabama and more than 100,000 in Georgia on Saturday morning, according to PowerOutage.us figures cited by BBC News. Roads flooded in Destin, police in Pensacola warned residents to stay off debris-strewn streets, and Florida’s National Guard deployed about 5,000 soldiers and airmen, Al Jazeera reported. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said the state had received no requests for search and rescue, calling that “cautiously, a good sign,” and said no fatalities had been reported so far, according to The Guardian.
Isaias peaked as a Category 3 storm before landfall. It is the first hurricane of the 2026 Atlantic season and, according to the BBC, the first time in more than 30 years that no hurricane formed before October. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said emergency declarations had been approved for Florida and Alabama. On the Pacific side, Hurricane Simon strengthened into a Category 4 storm with 140 mph winds as it headed for Mexico’s coast, and Tropical Storm Rachel brought high tides and street flooding to Southern California, Al Jazeera and the BBC reported.
Sources: National Hurricane Center, BBC News, Al Jazeera, The Guardian
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