Hurricane Isaias Slams Gulf Coast

Gonna move now to that powerful hurricane that slammed the Gulf Coast overnight. Hurricane Isaias made landfall around 9PM on the Florida Panhandle as a category two storm. Evacuation orders had been issued ahead of the storm, which comes during a relatively calm Atlantic hurricane hurricane season. Wadell with AccuWeather joins us now from Pensacola Beach, Florida, just a few miles from where that storm came ashore. Bill, get us up to speed on what happened here over the last twelve hours. You're on that barrier island. I know it's a it's a treacherous place to be during storms like this one. I'm picking up on what Christina just said. We've had what? A a two year reprieve almost from from these kinds of storms, hitting this part of the country. Made it through the whole hurricane season. Our fingers were, crossed, David Christina. Good morning to you. Yeah. A lot of people down here at the Gulf Coast were hopeful that they were gonna look out for two years in a row without a US Hurricane landfall, but we knew the odds were against us. Isaias blew through here with wind gusts in the Pensacola Beach area, topping ninety and one hundred miles an hour at times and in different places. I mean, you could see what the power of the wind did here. Large signs toppled over. A lot of the businesses boarded up. You may be able to hear it in the background. We're hearing a lot of sirens that's coming from the damaged businesses, also some blown out windows as well. So we had flooding here on this barrier island, a lot of wind damage. A bit of good news. The power came back on to part of the island just within the past two or three hours. But, yes, this location was under an evacuation order. We know that many people did leave. They're going over that three mile bridge that was shut down during the worst of this storm. But others that stayed here, we got an update from officials overnight. They are urging people just to hunker down and stay put. We're just now starting to get a bit of daylight, but so many hazards out here from down power lines, a lot of nails and debris on the roads that can puncture tires. So we're just starting to see the utility trucks rolling out. They're gonna get to work to restore power because at the peak of this storm, well over 800,000 homes and businesses across the Florida Panhandle and this part of the Southeast have been in the dark after East IES as it continues to move inland right now. Well, that's what I wanted to ask you about. Where is it now? Is it losing momentum? Is it losing strength, or is it still posing a a real threat as it moves up? Yeah. No. It it definitely has reduced intensity compared to what we saw at landfall, and that was well forecasted by the expert meteorologist at AccuWeather. It really packed a punch when it came here along the Florida Panhandle. Right now, not even officially Isaias. At this point. It quickly downgraded from cat two to cat one tropical storm. No longer even officially. AccuWeather meteorologists, so, continue to call this a tropical rainstorm as it moves inland. The center of what is left of the storm essentially in Alabama right now, it's gonna continue that jaunt to the Northeast and then make that hard turn to the East. So for the New York City area, for the I 95 Corridor, we're looking at the potential of one to two inches of rain Sunday into Monday. Some of the wind gusts up in the Northeast could top 20 miles an hour. So, impacts as the storm kinda makes that cross country track, but definitely the most widespread impacts being felt down here. This is going to be a costly storm when it comes to damage. One thing I will say is that, with Florida's building code, right, that has really evolved over the past twenty, thirty, forty years, many of these buildings built quite sturdy now, to handle these intense winds. So, yes, we are seeing damage. We are seeing issues here. But if this level of a storm had hit another state, you know, parts of Texas, Louisiana where we've covered a lot of storms, you would be seeing more widespread damage. So it is just important to put that in context. So, yes, these 100 plus mile an hour wind gusts did some damage here. If it had hit a different region that didn't have a strong building codes, you would be seeing a lot more visual damage from the. Alright.