Hurricane Isaias made landfall near Destin, Florida, around 8:30 p.m. Eastern time on Friday, October 9, as a Category 2 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 105 mph. The National Hurricane Center reported a 116 mph gust at Santa Rosa Sound, the strongest recorded along the coast as the storm moved ashore. Within an hour of landfall, Isaias weakened to a Category 1 storm, its center located about 45 miles east-northeast of Pensacola and moving north at 20 mph with a minimum central pressure of 982 millibars.
Destructive winds toppled trees and tore down power lines, and outages spread fast. The FOX Weather outage tracker showed more than 600,000 customers without electricity across Florida, Alabama and Georgia: over 375,000 in Florida, 215,000 in Alabama and more than 10,000 in Georgia. PowerOutage.com data cited by the Associated Press put the figure above 560,000 within an hour of landfall. The hardest-hit counties included Escambia County, Florida, where 70% of customers lost power, tiny Liberty County at 97%, and Conecuh County, Alabama, at 94%. Escambia County, home to Pensacola, had already reported more than 110,000 outages before the eyewall reached shore.
The danger did not end at landfall. A storm surge warning remained in effect from Dauphin Island, Alabama, to the Suwannee River in Florida. The Hurricane Center warned of 6 to 9 feet of surge along the coast from the Alabama-Florida border east to Grayton Beach, Florida, with more than 4 feet expected across a broader area. Rainfall totals of 4 to 8 inches were forecast for the weekend across southern Alabama, the Florida Panhandle and southwest Georgia, with up to 15 inches possible locally, raising the flash-flood risk. Forecasters also warned that hurricane-force winds near the center could reach as far as 100 miles inland and that tornadoes were possible.
"The storm is here. Buckle down at this point. Don't be getting out on the roads," Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said at a news conference, warning that flash flooding would remain a hazard "throughout the region." He urged residents to assume they would lose power. The National Weather Service advised people in the affected areas to have a safe room to ride out the storm and "prepare for long-duration power outages." DeSantis had expanded a state of emergency to 27 North Florida counties on October 8. Several bridges closed ahead of landfall, and Waffle House restaurants in Escambia and Santa Rosa counties shut down — FEMA informally uses the "Waffle House Index" to gauge a storm's severity. In Mobile, Alabama, officials reported downed trees and power lines, and the Emerald Coast Utilities Authority issued a boil-water notice for some customers.
Isaias is the first Atlantic hurricane of the 2026 season — a season that had stayed relatively quiet under a strong El Nino — and the first hurricane to hit the United States since 2024. The Hurricane Center expects the storm to keep weakening as it moves inland Saturday, though gusty winds will continue well inland, and it could be downgraded to a post-tropical storm over the weekend. Utility companies said repair crews would go out once conditions were safe.