The remnants of Hurricane Isaias pushed northward into the central Appalachians and mid-Atlantic states Sunday, threatening flash flooding and tornadoes while communities along the Florida Panhandle and southern Alabama began the painful process of cleaning up after the storm’s destructive landfall.
Isaias made landfall as a Category 2 hurricane near Destin, Florida on Friday before tearing into Alabama with tropical-force winds. The storm has been blamed for at least four deaths across the region.
In Florida’s Escambia County, a woman was killed when a falling tree crushed her home and a man died of carbon monoxide poisoning after running a generator inside his garage. In Birmingham, Alabama, a tree fell on a house and killed one person. A fourth death was recorded in Barbour County, Alabama, in a vehicle crash involving a downed tree.
Hurricane-force winds ripped the roof off a Pensacola hotel and caused significant damage to the city’s airport. The storm also flattened a boathouse in Destin and tore away part of the facade of a high-rise building in Panama City Beach.
Roughly 356,000 customers remained without power Sunday afternoon across the Florida Panhandle and southern Alabama. Utility crews from across Florida and more than two dozen other states were mobilized to restore electricity.
In western North Carolina, rivers overflowed their banks as Isaias dumped torrential rainfall on the region. One weather station in McDowell County recorded nearly 10 inches of rain in a 24-hour period. First responders there dealt with five landslides and multiple flooded roadways overnight Saturday into Sunday. Two people camping near the Catawba River in Burke County were rescued from floodwaters along with their dog.
Tornadoes remained possible across parts of Virginia and North Carolina as the storm’s remnants continued moving north. The National Hurricane Center warned that coastal flooding was running as much as 1.5 feet above predicted levels in some areas.
On the opposite side of the country, former tropical storm Rachel degraded into a post-tropical cyclone but still unleashed enormous waves on the Southern California coastline. The system eventually dissipated over the Las Vegas area after drenching desert communities across the Southwest.
In Long Beach, California, powerful surf battered a century-old wooden boardwalk and forced residents of oceanfront homes to evacuate. More than half a dozen coastal homes were declared structurally unsafe. Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson called the impacts unprecedented for the community, which was still recovering from Hurricane Marie just weeks earlier.