The area of concern I mentioned in 
The official forecast from early Wednesday morning brings Isaias up to a borderline Category 2-3 hurricane in the central Gulf, then shows some weakening prior to landfall overnight on Friday, likely between New Orleans LA and Panama City FL. Tropical storm force winds should arrive along the north-central Gulf coast on Friday evening.
Rainfall and storm surge impacts will be noticeably more severe for places to the right of the track... for example, roughly Mobile to Tampa. Storm surge guidance isn't available yet, but stay closely tuned to the NHC webpage for the latest... storm surge will likely be fairly significant.
The storm will also be moving rather quickly by the time it makes landfall, so the wind impacts will also be carried further inland than "normal", again, primarily to the right of the track.
I brought this up in my annual "cone" refresher post, but remember that the intensity forecast also contains uncertainty, just like the track does. You can see the track forecast cone above, but here's my take on the intensity forecast cone, as of Wednesday morning's Advisory #3. The cone is based on NHC's intensity forecast errors over the previous five seasons.
With an active tropical storm (and likely hurricane soon), the Accumulated Cyclone Energy will get its biggest boost of the entire season by far. As of today, it's at about 11% of average, but the next 3 days could nudge that up to approximately 16-20% of average.
Some name history: Isaias (pronounced ees-ah-EE-ahs) was first introduced to List 6 (the one we're using this year) in 2014... it replaced Ike after the 2008 season. In 2014 however, the name never got used because the very quiet season ended with Hanna. It was used in 2020 and now in 2026. It most likely will not get retired this year, so we'll see it again in 2032.
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