{"id":422937,"date":"2026-10-09T04:44:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-09T04:44:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/422937\/"},"modified":"2026-10-09T04:44:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-09T04:44:10","slug":"pensacola-mayor-speaks-with-wesh-2-as-hurricane-nears-florida","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/422937\/","title":{"rendered":"Pensacola mayor speaks with WESH 2 as hurricane nears Florida"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"BrandonPENSACOLA, Fla. \u2014<\/p>\n

Pensacola Mayor D.C. Reeves spoke with First Warning Chief Meteorologist Tony Mainolfi on Thursday as Hurricane Isaias churned in the Gulf. <\/p>\n

The storm is forecast to make landfall \u2014 potentially in the Florida Panhandle \u2014 by late Friday or early Saturday, according to the National Hurricane Center<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Mainolfi caught up with Mayor Reeves after spending much of Thursday making the drive from Orlando up and over to Pensacola. <\/p>\n

“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.” <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

“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. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

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<\/a> due to the incoming storm. <\/p>\n

Reeves had this to say to those who may find themselves in an evacuation zone due to the hurricane: <\/p>\n

“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.” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PENSACOLA, Fla. \u2014 Pensacola Mayor D.C. Reeves spoke with First Warning Chief Meteorologist Tony Mainolfi on Thursday as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":422938,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[622,28,30,29,12205,514,166814,1846,166815,2343,12872,8987,166813,73818,4503,1284,918],"class_list":["post-422937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-escambia-county","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-florida-panhandle","tag-gulf","tag-high-tide-situation","tag-hurricane","tag-late-friday","tag-mph","tag-nhc","tag-pensacola","tag-pensacola-mayor-d-c-reeves","tag-reeves","tag-storm","tag-thursday","tag-wesh"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=422937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422937\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/422938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=422937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=422937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=422937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}