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At approximately 9:35 p.m. on Oct. 9, the Tallahassee Fire Department (TFD) was dispatched to a reported residential structure fire on Cavalcade Trail after a tree fell onto a home during Hurricane Isaias.<\/p>\n
Tallahassee Fire Department<\/p>\n
USA TODAY Network, Reuters<\/p>\n
Hurricane Isaias delivered a grazing but still powerful blow to the Big Bend, knocking out power to tens of thousands of customers – including the Franklin County jail, where a backup generator failed – and flooding some coastal and low-lying areas.<\/p>\n
Isaias, the first hurricane of an otherwise underactive Atlantic season to form and make U.S. landfall, came ashore around 9:30 p.m. Eastern time on Friday, Oct. 9, near Destin as a high-end Category 2 storm with 105 to 110 mph winds.<\/p>\n
Tallahassee, which was on the eastern or “dirty” side of the hurricane, managed to avoid some of the more dire scenarios that concerned forecasters – namely a small outbreak of tornadoes or rainfall totals of a foot-plus.<\/p>\n
Official rainfall totals at Tallahassee International Airport hit a modest 2.77 inches through midnight, though other area saw as much as 4 inches. Parks Camp, meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Tallahassee, said the city didn’t pick up much more rain after that.<\/p>\n
“We had tropical storm-force conditions generally as we expected with a pretty decent shot of rainfall and some gusty winds that caused some power outages, some trees down,” he said Saturday, Oct. 10, the morning after landfall. “Things are starting to clear up now.”<\/p>\n
Just minutes after landfall, the Tallahassee Fire Department responded to a fire on Cavalcade Trail after a tree fell on a house. No injuries were reported.<\/p>\n
“Despite heavy rain and strong winds complicating suppression efforts, firefighters successfully brought the fire under control,” TFD said in a news release.<\/p>\n
Most watches and warning for Leon and surrounding counties were canceled as of Oct. 10. Flood warnings were in effect for the Ochlockonee River near State Road 20 affecting Leon, Liberty and Wakulla counties, and the St. Marks River near Newport on Old Magnolia Road, affecting Leon and Wakulla counties. The river was expected to crest near or above levels that flood nearby homes.<\/p>\n
Nearly 25,000 city of Tallahassee customers lost power, though crews got that number down to 5,000 within about an hour after landfall. By Saturday morning, mostly scattered outages remained, the city said in a news release.<\/p>\n
“Working nonstop all through the night into this morning, crews restored over 98% and are continuing to make progress on the approximately 2,000 remaining scattered outages caused by impacts from Hurricane Isaias,” the city said. “Work is ongoing as additional crews focus on complex, isolated and individual repairs throughout today.”<\/p>\n
In Franklin County, Sheriff A.J. “Tony” Smith said a tornado hit the evening of Oct. 9 before dark, affecting not just the jail but 911 service. He said it came in from the bay, crossed U.S. Highway 98 and went north up State Road 65, where the jail is located.<\/p>\n
“As it did, it hit the transmission lines that feed a lot of our neighbors up north and folks around Eastpoint,” he said in a Facebook video. “Some of the folks in that area lost power, as did the Franklin County Jail.”<\/p>\n
He said that a backup generator started like it was supposed to but stopped after maybe an hour. Attempts to revive it were unsuccessful.<\/p>\n
“As a result, our 911 went down,” he said. “Just everything went down.”<\/p>\n
Hurricane Isaias knocks out power to 400,000 customers across North Florida<\/p>\n
Shortly after landfall, Gov. Ron DeSantis said in a news conference that debris removal and search and rescue teams were ready and that power restoration crews would mobilize “as soon as it’s safe to do so and they have the light to be able to operate.”<\/p>\n
He said that as of landfall, some 260,000 electric customers were without power from Pensacola to Panama city and Tallahassee. As of 8 a.m. Saturday, that number had grown to more than 440,000.<\/p>\n
In Escambia County, more than 130,000 customers or 75%, were without power, according to Florida Public Service Commission records. In Bay County, more than 43,000 or nearly a third of customers were in the dark.<\/p>\n
In Franklin County, power was restored to 96% of customers by the following morning. Talquin Electrical Cooperative, which serves parts of Leon, Liberty, Gadsden and Wakulla counties, reported about 3,600 or 6.2% of customers were still without power.<\/p>\n
DeSantis said state agencies didn’t see “the volume of requests that usually come” with such storms.<\/p>\n
“That’s a cautiously optimistic sign,” he said during the briefing.<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump approved Florida’s request for disaster assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for Hurricane Isaias.<\/p>\n
The assistance is for Baker, Bay, Calhoun, Citrus, Columbia, Dixie, Escambia, Franklin, Gadsden, Gilchrist, Gulf, Hamilton, Holmes, Jackson, Jefferson, Lafayette, Leon, Levy, Liberty, Madison, Okaloosa, Santa Rosa, Suwannee, Taylor, Walton, Wakulla and Washington counties, the agency said in a news release.<\/p>\n
Franklin County Sheriff’s Office hoping to restore ‘some functionality’ after reported twister<\/p>\n
Isaias made for a night of turbulent travel for anyone planning to fly in or out of Tallahassee International Airport. There were at least 10 canceled TLH-bound flights, including every scheduled arrival after 11 p.m. from Dallas, Atlanta and Miami.<\/p>\n
Passengers on a long-delayed flight from Charlotte approached Tallahassee at about 5:30 p.m., but the flight turned around and headed back to Charlotte as a rain band lashed the airport, according to the tracking website FlightAware.<\/p>\n
After 911 went down in Franklin County, Sheriff Smith said calls were supposed to go to Liberty County. But because Liberty County was affected by the outage, too, 911 calls were routed to Wakulla County instead.<\/p>\n
The sheriff said smaller generators were powering lights and fans inside the jail, which is located in Eastpoint. He added he spoke with Duke Energy reps who assured him that they were “first on the list” to get repaired in the morning.<\/p>\n
“So don’t worry about it if you have family members in jail – they’re being taken care of,” Smith said. “I’ve been in there. It’s cool. It’s not hot.”<\/p>\n
Smith said the backup battery supply for the dispatch center and 911 “ran down” after the generator failed but that the Emergency Operations Center loaned the Sheriff’s Office generators on top of some it already had.<\/p>\n
“We’re going to try to see if we can get those battery backups powered back up so that we can restore some of our functionality,” he said. “Rest assured, you’re still safe. We’re still working alpha\/bravo, have a lot of deputies out on patrol. You’ve probably seen them.”<\/p>\n
NWS urges people to ‘remain vigilant’ in Isaias’ aftermath<\/p>\n
NWS meteorologist Andy Hayner late Friday night said Tallahassee saw plenty of windy and rainy conditions, trees down and power outages.<\/p>\n
A top wind gust of 52 mph was recorded at Tallahassee airport, while a rain gauge in Killearn recorded about 4 inches in six hours. Other parts of the county saw about 3 inches of rain, which was on the low end of projections.<\/p>\n
And while points east, including Perry, saw more rain from Isaias on Saturday morning, skies over Tallahassee were already clearing. Dobbs said the biggest threat facing the Big Bend – heavy training rain bands – didn’t materialize in the capital city.<\/p>\n
“The heavy rain that could have set up here just kind of came through and moved on,” he said. “And so that kept us from getting the really heavy flooding that we could have had there.”<\/p>\n
The tornado threat mostly fizzled too, aside from the reported twister in Franklin County. Before the storm, forecasters said they couldn’t rule out a few tornadoes, including a strong EF2 with wind speeds of 111-135 mph.<\/p>\n
“The tornado threat – we didn’t see many of those, probably due to some dry air,” Dobbs said. “Because the storm, right as it got to the coast, ingested a lot of dry air and weakened quite rapidly. But that dry air probably helped inhibit some of the tornado development.”<\/p>\n
Storm surge also came in just under projections, with about 3 feet in Franklin, Jefferson and Wakulla counties, he added.<\/p>\n
NWS Tallahassee said the tornado risk diminished significantly after the storm but there was another “window of opportunity” later in the day.<\/p>\n
“Despite the overall improved weather conditions, residents are urged to remain vigilant with respect to damage in the form of downed trees and power lines, in addition to any standing water from flooding rains, and continued hazardous beach conditions,” the Weather Service said. “Listen to local officials during any cleanup efforts. Exercise caution if affected by power outages.”<\/p>\n
Meteorologist Ryan Truchelut of Tallahassee-based WeatherTiger noted that “Florida’s hurricane landfall-free streak since Milton ended at exactly 2 years and 1 hour.<\/p>\n
“For what it’s worth, there are no other tropical threats to the continental U.S. for the next week,” he wrote on Facebook, “giving time for Florida to recover from yet another brutal surge and wind hit.”<\/p>\n
Contact Jeff Burlew at jburlew@tallahassee.com or 850-599-2180.<\/p>\n
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Isaias spares Tallahassee, but topples trees and creates power struggle<\/p>\n
Reporting by Jeff Burlew and William L. Hatfield, Tallahassee Democrat \/ Tallahassee Democrat<\/p>\n
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect<\/p>\n
![\"Early](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/f3c10d5e-67dc-4aee-87c6-67ea071d80e8.jpeg\" "\\"f3c10d5e-67dc-4aee-87c6-67ea071d80e8\\"")
Early morning damage in Escambia County near Scenic Highway from Hurricane Isaias. Mollye Barrows USA TODAY Network, Reuters <\/p>\n
Copyright Reuters or USA Today Network via Reuters Connect<\/p>\n
This story was originally published October 10, 2026 at 11:52 AM.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At approximately 9:35 p.m. on Oct. 9, the Tallahassee Fire Department (TFD) was dispatched to a reported residential…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":424444,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[232,234,233],"class_list":["post-424443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee-headlines","tag-tallahassee-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424443","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=424443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424443\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/424444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}