Major Hurricane Isaias

[OHweather]

3 hours ago, NorthHillsWx said:

Pretty solid gusts recorded with this one. 118, 116, 114, 110 were the highest I’ve seen and most of those were from the western edge of the degrading eyewall! Pensacola through Milton to Jay seem to have had a sting jet because they were not in the actual eyewall or at best on the edge and that area all saw gusts over 110. I see the usual discord of land obs not matching operational intensity (not worth arguing with those people after every storm) but this system produced widespread gusts over 100 and several recorded gusts over major hurricane strength. Also, that sustained wind of 92 being recorded is impressive. Overall, Kind of in line with exactly what was forecast…. As for LF pressure as @GaWx shows this thing was rapidly filling in as the actual center crossed the coast. As all of the eyewall was already ashore I don’t think it matters as much here but when the actual center crossed the coast as it was well behind the main convection i doubt Winds over 100 were occurring.

We’ll see what surge looks like but the worst is going to be between Destin and Panama City. Panama City measuring 5.6 feet makes me worried there are going to be some 7-9’ areas to the west. Daylight will reveal that.

Overall this storm was exceptionally well-forecast by NHC and with a challenging forecast, pretty early on they were advertising a dangerous hurricane at landfall. If anyone doesn’t think seeing wind gusts over 100 with some major gusts over 110 also actually recorded qualifies as a “dangerous” hurricane, not much else to say here. 

For all the talk of wind measurements with landfalls, I agree the measurements we got from Isaias were impressive and suggest it probably was in fact a low-end cat 2 around the time of landfall. Given how quickly it was weakening at that point it wouldn’t surprise me if it did weaken slightly more than the operationally estimated 90kt at landfall, but the eyewall was impacting the coast when it was at that intensity. 
 

I agree with some points raised here - the maximum sustained winds are not something people should expect to see at their location on land, and properly communicating that (while still maintaining the proper level of urgency) is important. Even if you’re not seeing the max sustained winds on land, hazards such as wind damage and surge are very much proportional to those max sustained winds. You won’t see cat 5 sustained winds away from the coast in a cat 5 eyewall, but it would still be destructive and no one would be quibbling over it. Would also like to mention that when storms are sampled by recon, there is a wide array of instrumentation measuring winds at/near the surface and aloft, with well-researched and established reduction factors to equate low-level winds to the surface winds in these storms. The NHC is not just making up the max sustained winds. I do agree with the sentiment that NHC can be slow to operationally reduce the winds in storms that are weakening as landfall approaches, but understand why they’re cautious with that. 

[NEGA_Dawg]

Looks like the NW side has become the wettest side.

[NavarreDon]

Regardless of strength (I’ve seen Andrew & Michael up close). Unless you have boots on the ground you don’t realize the amount of damage even a storm of this strength can cause. My thoughts are with the many people who are dealing with issues big or small. I can tell you the Emerald Coast got smacked by this. Glass half full thoughts, are the shear and dry air saved us from what could’ve been a monster!


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