By JEFF MASTERS
Climate Central says climate-warmed Gulf waters made Isaias’s winds 7 mph stronger than they otherwise would have been. This would result in over a doubling of the hurricane’s damages, because of the exponential rise in damage with winds.
Hurricane Isaias made landfall around 9:30 p.m. EDT Friday, Oct. 9, near Destin, Florida, at Category 2 strength with top sustained winds of 105 mph (165 km/h) and a central pressure of 971 millibars (28.67 inches). In the final few hours before landfall, high wind shear of 40-60 knots was able to weaken Isaias from its 120-mph peak. Isaias was moving at a fast 18 mph (30 km/h) pace at landfall, and degenerated quickly into a post-tropical cyclone with 35 mph winds at 5 a.m. EDT Saturday, Oct. 10.
Most of Isaias’s intense showers and thunderstorms had been focused in the hurricane’s northern half, so conditions improved quickly along the coast after landfall. Ex-Isaias will bring flooding rains, damaging wind gusts, and a few tornadoes to the Southeast today.
In a press release on Oct. 9, Dr. Daniel Gilford, Meteorologist and Climate Scientist at Climate Central, said:
“The first hurricane of the season clearly shows the fingerprints of climate change. Climate-warmed Gulf waters mean that Isaias is forecast to be 7 mph stronger than it would have been in a world without heat-trapping carbon pollution, increasing the chances of expensive and life-threatening consequences for Gulf coast communities.”
A 7 mph increase in winds may not seem like much— that’s about a 6% increase in the Isaias’s winds. But as I explained in my 2026 post, Global warming is making the strongest hurricanes stronger, a 5% increase in hurricane winds yields about a 50% increase in damage: Hurricane damage increases exponentially with an increase in winds (see NOAA’s damage multiplier table).
Climate Central detailed multiple other ways that climate change made Isaias worse:
- Isaias underwent rapid intensification over waters that were 1.4 degrees Celsius (2.4°F) warmer on average than they would have been in a world without climate change. These unusually warm Gulf waters, exceeding 31°C (88°F), were made 4 to 600 times more likely due to human-caused climate change, depending upon the exact location in the Gulf being considered. Across the southwest Gulf, where Isaias first organized, the warmth was especially stark, estimated to have been 600-800 times more likely to occur by human-caused climate change, as shown in the Bluesky post embedded above.
- The Gulf’s warmer oceans supercharge tropical systems’ ability to carry moisture, adding to the ongoing flood concerns, especially across southern Alabama, the Florida Panhandle and Big Bend, and southwest Georgia through the weekend.
- Human-caused climate change has raised sea levels in the region that experienced Isaias’s greatest storm surge by about 6.5 inches since 1900, allowing storm surges to reach higher levels and increase their potential for destruction. At the Pensacola, Fl, tide gauge, sea level has risen a little over 12 inches since the gauge was installed in 1923. Almost half of that rise can be attributed to human-caused climate change (Fig. 2).
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Confirmed: Climate scientists calculated that Hurricane Isaias was pushed up to Category 3 (major) due to climate change — the extra climate fuel available in the record warm Gulf.
Damages were doubled because of 7 mph wind increase.
Law firms and their specially trained… pic.twitter.com/WyZtDlggZr
— Ryan Maue (@RyanWeather) October 10, 2026
