Intensifying Hurricane Isaias to make landfall Friday night

Since my previous post on Wednesday, Isaias did indeed become the first hurricane of the season on October 8. Related to that, I shared this on Bluesky: "During the satellite era (I'm using 1966), that is BY FAR the latest... by 27 days! It's an incredible 63 days after the median date."

Now, on Friday morning, Isaias is nearly a Category 3 hurricane and will likely reach that intensity at the 11am EDT advisory. The first sunrise satellite image of it today (at the top of the post) shows a clearing eye as the powerful hurricane heads north... the infrared satellite animation below shows the evolution over the previous 8 hours.

The NHC's forecast map shows the track forecast cone with the hurricane and tropical storm watches and warnings. Note how far inland these wind impacts extend. It takes some time for the hurricane's strong winds to decay after landfall. The storm is expected to weaken slightly prior to reaching the coast, so the peak intensity will likely be midday Friday, but that will be a small difference.

Landfall will be somewhere right around midnight close to Pensacola FL. Impacts extend very far from the landfall point of course. Here is this morning's suite of HTI (Hurricane Threats and Impacts) graphics from the NWS:

I also have a long regional updating radar loop available at https://bmcnoldy.earth.miami.edu/tropics/radar/... the version as of this writing is shown below, where the inner core of the hurricane is barely in radar range yet, but stay tuned throughout the day and into tonight as the loop builds.

I am still quite amazed at the lead time we've had in watching this storm take shape, and the accuracy of very long-range model output, particularly from Google Deepmind. My post from September 30 --10 days ago-- serves as a good documentation of this: Eyes shift to southern Gulf of Mexico for next potential storm. Certainly can't say it took anyone by surprise!

Aside from Isaias, no new activity is on the horizon, so I'll update the seasonal ACE and put together some updated preliminary forecast verification stats shortly.

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