PENSACOLA, Fla. —
Pensacola Mayor D.C. Reeves spoke with First Warning Chief Meteorologist Tony Mainolfi on Thursday as Hurricane Isaias churned in the Gulf.
The storm is forecast to make landfall — potentially in the Florida Panhandle — by late Friday or early Saturday, according to the National Hurricane Center.
Mainolfi caught up with Mayor Reeves after spending much of Thursday making the drive from Orlando up and over to Pensacola.
“Unfortunately, and fortunately, we’re used to this,” Reeves said. “What we’ve been saying today is, ‘Everything we can control is underway.’ That means stormwater ponds, police and fire upstaffed; we have a shelter open since 3 o’clock today through our emergency operations center. The bottom line is, everything within our control, certainly our residents and our visitors can rest assured that we’re doing those things.”
Hurricane Isaias became a Category 2 storm Thursday afternoon, with maximum sustained wind speeds of up to 105 mph as of the NHC’s 11 p.m. update.
It was located about 260 miles south of the mouth of the Mississippi River at the time, moving northeast at 14 mph and expected to turn north on Friday.
“We took on 8 inches of rain this past weekend, so that means you got saturated ground, which means trees will fall a little easier. We also could be in a high tide situation,” Reeves said of storm surge.
If peak surge occurs at high tide, NHC forecasters predict it could reach 5 to 7 feet high along a stretch of the Gulf Coast that includes Pensacola.
Pensacola is located in Escambia County, one of the 27 Florida counties that Gov. Ron DeSantis has declared are now under a state of emergency due to the incoming storm.
Reeves had this to say to those who may find themselves in an evacuation zone due to the hurricane:
“It’s not a friendly suggestion, it’s something you need to do,” he said. “It’s hard to leave your house. Why would you want to leave your house? It’s a painful thing to do. Our response to that is, it’s not as painful as losing someone in your family. Evacuation doesn’t mean 300 miles away. There’s a good evacuation just getting into the county or further inland away from that storm surge that Pensacola Beach is going to feel.”