Hurricane Isaias came ashore near Destin Friday evening as a Category 2 storm, and the damage is now coming into focus. At least four people died across the Florida Panhandle and southern Alabama, including two killed by falling trees. Winds topped 100 mph, tearing roofs off homes and cutting power to hundreds of thousands at the peak. The storm did not stop at landfall either: its remnants spawned a tornado in Georgia and multiple confirmed tornadoes in North Carolina.
The rest of the country got hit too, just in a different way. Remnants of Tropical Storm Rachel combined with another system to bring heavy rain and dangerous surf to Southern California, where homes were damaged in Long Beach and Newport Beach streets turned into rivers. That same system pushed into Las Vegas, delivering over an inch of rain and one of the wettest October days the city has ever recorded.
For those of us on the Suncoast, the takeaway is simple. Hurricane season runs through the end of November, and October storms have visited us before. A storm kit, a communication plan, and a check on your neighbors cost almost nothing now and mean everything later. So what is the one thing you still have not done to get ready for storm season?
