The death toll is starting to come in from Isaias. The storm came ashore near Destin, Florida, on Friday night as a Category 2 hurricane with 105 mph winds and weakened to a post-tropical cyclone by Saturday morning — but officials confirmed Saturday that at least two people have died, and much of the Southeast remains under a serious flash-flood threat.
Both victims were struck when trees fell onto their homes. Escambia County Sheriff Chip Simmons confirmed that a woman died late Friday night after a tree crashed through her house. In Alabama, Jefferson County Emergency Management Director Jim Coker told the Tuscaloosa News that a Birmingham resident died early Saturday when a tree fell on a home.
A Dale County sheriff's deputy was also injured after a falling tree struck him while he responded to an overturned vehicle, Sheriff Mason Bynum told News4.
The confirmations came hours after Florida Governor Ron DeSantis told reporters at a 7:30 a.m. Central briefing Saturday that no deaths had been confirmed.
A weakened storm is not a harmless one. The National Weather Service issued a Level 3-out-of-4 flood risk for parts of north Georgia and the Blue Ridge Mountains, including the Atlanta and Asheville metro areas. Destin and Fort Walton Beach were under an extreme wind warning and a flash-flood emergency; Fort Walton Beach saw two to three feet of standing water within hours of landfall. Rivers in the western Florida panhandle are expected to crest Saturday.
National Hurricane Center warning coordination meteorologist Robbie Berg said all storm-surge warnings have been canceled, but high-wind warnings remain in parts of the Southeast, and "significant flash flooding" is possible in the coming days.
The outage map stayed grim. About 900,000 customers were without power Saturday morning, falling to roughly 800,000 by the afternoon, according to PowerOutage.com, with Florida accounting for more than half. DeSantis said over 16,000 line workers have been deployed, but some customers may not get power back for days or even weeks.
The Destin–Fort Walton Beach and Pensacola International airports closed for debris cleanup, and roads were shut across southern Alabama. By Saturday morning the storm's center sat about 25 miles south-southwest of Montgomery, Alabama, moving north into the Tennessee Valley at 35 mph before weakening as it turns northeast on Sunday.
DeSantis warned residents at his briefing: "The storm is here. Buckle down at this point. Don't be getting out on the roads." He said flash flooding would threaten "the entire region" and promised, "We'll get everything back up and running… as soon as possible."
One striking coincidence: exactly two years earlier, on October 9, 2024, Category 3 Hurricane Milton made landfall in Florida. According to USA Today, citing WeatherNation, Isaias's landfall ended a two-year U.S. hurricane-landfall drought.