Gulf Coast readies as Isaias forecast to intensify

There remains significant variation in the forecasted paths of Isaias, leading to “below average confidence” in the storm’s likely track, the hurricane center said in its early Wednesday update. An area stretching from Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, eastward to Indian Pass, Florida, was put on a hurricane watch early in the day.

The forecasting models are split, according to the hurricane center, with newer AI-based models mostly calling for the storm to take a faster, more eastward path in the direction of Alabama or the Florida Panhandle while traditional physics-based models indicate a slower trajectory toward Mississippi or southeastern Louisiana remains likely.

At 1 p.m. CDT, Tropical Storm Isaias was located about 520 miles south-southwest of the mouth of the Mississippi River and moving east-northeast at 8 mph with maximum sustained winds of 50 mph, the hurricane center’s website shows.

On Tuesday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency for 25 counties, and the same day emergency management agencies in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana went on alert.

In Alabama, the city of Gulf Shores canceled the 55th annual National Shrimp Festival, which was expected to draw more than 250,000 visitors over the weekend, while beach town Orange Beach declared an emergency. Just across the state’s border, municipal crews in Pensacola raced to clear drainage ditches and secure construction sites ahead of heavy rains expected by Friday.

Mississippi Emergency Management Agency Director Stephen “Mac” McCraney activated unified response planning with the Mississippi Department of Public Safety and the Mississippi National Guard, and emergency planners down in Biloxi began moving fuel, generators and heavy equipment to staging sites near the coast.

Hurricane center meteorologists indicated in the late-afternoon update that the current watches now in effect are likely to be upgraded to official hurricane and storm surge warnings early Thursday morning as the system continues to move toward landfall.

Historically, hurricanes with names that begin with the letter "I" such as Ivan, Irma, Ida and Ian have been notoriously destructive.

Isaias could break or tie a 121-year-old record for the latest formation date on record for an Atlantic season’s first hurricane. On Oct. 8, 1905, an unnamed storm catalogued by historians as “Hurricane Two” reached hurricane strength while passing south of Bermuda, but it never made landfall in the United States.

Oil and gas companies continued evacuations of workers from platforms across a large area in the Gulf on Wednesday. The U.S. Marine Minerals Administration reported that offshore producers have shut in roughly 25% of the Gulf’s daily crude oil production, reducing output by about 511,000 barrels a day. Natural gas shut-ins rose to more than 16% of daily output as operators evacuated personnel from at least eight manned platforms, according to the agency.

According to Earth Science Associates’ GOMsmart platform, which estimates energy production in the Gulf of Mexico, losses of 11.17 million barrels of oil and 13.25 billion cubic feet of gas are expected to result from Isaias. This compares to estimated production losses of 7.12 million barrels of oil and 9.85 billion cubic feet of gas resulting from Tropical Storm Bertha, which struck the Louisiana coast in July.