Here’s What Concerns This Meteorologist The Most About Category 3 Hurricane Isaias

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1:03Hi, everybody. I'm Brittany Lewis, a breaking news reporter here at Forbes. Joining me once again is meteorologist and Forbes senior contributor, Dr. Marshall Shepard. Dr. Shepard, thanks so much for coming on. Thank you for having me once again, Brittany. Whenever you are on, we know that there is a serious weather event we need to be looking out for, and this time is no different. And I do want to timestamp where we are right now. It's Friday afternoon and there is now an intensifying Category 3 hurricane making its way towards the Gulf Coast. East IES is the first hurricane of the 2026 Atlantic hurricane season.

1:38So to start off the conversation, could you give us a bit of a timeline here? What can we expect and when? You're right. It's been a very quiet Atlantic hurricane season, but we expected that because of El Nino. But it's going out with a bang. We have a strengthening Category 3 Hurricane Isaias in the Gulf right now, and sustained winds 120 miles per hour. I expect to make landfall somewhere near Mobile or Pensacola, Florida later tonight, Friday, or perhaps very early in the morning on Saturday. This is a serious storm. Anything in the Cat 2, Cat 3 range always worries me, Brittany. And what also worries me is whenever we have a storm that's intensifying right as it's approaching landfall.

2:26And that's been quite common in recent years. Talk to us a little bit about that. Why are we seeing it move and intensify as it gets closer and closer to land? Because when you wrote your piece this morning, it was a Cat 2, then it strengthened to a Cat 3. Right. And one of the things that there's always this constant battle in meteorology lingo. So there's plenty of warm water in the Gulf. But we expected and still do somewhat expect as the storm gets closer to land, there's going to be more wind shear, more change in wind speed and direction as you go up in atmosphere. The hurricanes don't like to form when there's a lot of wind shear.

3:04They don't like to intensify. But what often happens in the Gulf, Brittany, that water is so hot and getting warmer because of climate change, these storms, the hot water wins out. In other words, even if you have a sheer environment that's not favorable, sometimes that hot water can win out. And that seems to be what's happening right now with this hurricane. And so it's been intensifying over the last 24 hours or so. And like I said, even if it does slightly weaken right before landfall to a strong Category 2, what I like to emphasize is don't get caught up on whether it's strong Cat 2 or weaker Cat 3.

3:43the impacts are going to be exactly the same in terms of the storm surge, the tornado risk, extreme rainfall, and extreme wind. You always tell me that. You say, hey, regardless of the category, don't get caught up on that. It usually doesn't tell the whole story. Does it here? It does not. And one of the other things that the story, and I was talking to my wife at dinner about this last night, because here in Georgia, we're going to experience tropical storm force wind gusts, two to three inches of rain, perhaps tornadoes. She's like, but isn't the storm going to be in Alabama? I said, yes, but remember the storm is not a line or it's not dots on a map.

4:23It is a large expansive system that covers entire regions. And so I often in my messaging, and you certainly know this over the years, I often try to convey to focus on the impacts of of the storm and the expansiveness of those impacts, not that little line or dot you see on the map. That's just for guidance in terms of warning. So yeah, we expect tornadic storms much to the right of the center of the storm, perhaps in Alabama, Georgia, and then storm surge from the Mississippi coast all the way over to the panhandle of Florida, and then extreme rain in much of the southeast over this weekend.

5:01And oh, by the way, Brittany, even perhaps by late Sunday into early Monday, some of the remnant moisture from this storm could make its way up into the mid-Atlantic and perhaps even as far north as New York, where you are. This holiday, all plans, even unlimited, are just$15 a month. A holiday deal this good obviously deserves an enormously expensive holiday song, like All I Want. Right. Okay, we can't afford that. You know what? Forget the music budget. We're going to stick with whatever's in the public domain. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch.

5:32Dr. Marshall Shepherd: Upfront payment of$45 for three months,$90 for six months, or$180 for a 12-month plan required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. New customer offer for initial plan term only. Greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. See terms. Afternoon glare totally ruined my watch party for the big game. That's when my buddy recommended Blinds.com. With custom window treatments made to fit your style, space, and budget, Customers who shop at Blinds.com experienced overwhelming satisfaction. Side effects may include a fuller, deeper night's sleep and the sudden urge to host the watch party again.

6:04Blinds.com isn't a medication, but it can improve how you feel about your home. Shop Black Friday all month long at Blinds.com. Don't miss huge deals dropping every week. That's a lot of people to be keeping an eye out. That is covering a lot of ground here. But in your piece for Forbes, you noted a point from a fellow weather expert, and he said, never trust a hurricane in the Gulf. Why not? And why can't we trust this one? Yeah, I got to give a big shout out to Dr. Brad Johnson, who's one of my former Ph.D. students at the University of Georgia, who now has his own weather company. And what Brad is really referring to, and we saw this with Hurricane Michael back in 2018 that devastated parts of Panama City and that area.

6:50Michael was also moving in an environment where it looked like the wind shear was not going to be favorable for it to continue to intensify, but it did. And so I think what Dr. Johnson's saying there and what I'm picking up on in that quote is that with the Gulf waters, as warm as they are, don't underestimate the potential for these storms to be sneaky about maintaining intensity or even increasing some and that's what we've seen. I've been writing in Forbes all week about this storm at Forbes.com and one of the things I've always written in those articles is the models or the forecasts are suggesting maybe cat 1 cat 2 at landfall but every article was just about that I wrote, Brittany, I said but there is a likelihood that this storm will overperform and that it will intensify to major hurricane status which it is now.

7:40Cat 3 and higher is major hurricane status And some of our best models, including the Google DeepMind, which is an AI-based model, have been hinting consistently that this was going to get to major hurricane status, and it has. You mentioned a storm that was so devastating that if we're thinking about an upcoming storm, I wouldn't want that one even in the conversation. And that's Hurricane Michael. It was a Category 5 storm from 2018. It hit the Florida Panhandle the hardest, but it caused around$25 billion worth of damage. It killed dozens of people. Like I said, it was a Cat 5 storm. Are you expecting something similar here?

8:21I do not expect this to get to a Category 5. And there is sort of the level of intensity is very much dependent on the category. Having said that, I do expect this to be an impactful storm that has life-threatening storm surge, has potentially dangerous tornadoes and wind. Hurricane Michael was one of the most extreme storms that we've seen in the Atlantic Basin. Let's hope, and I'm knocking on all kinds of wood around me, including my head, hoping that this does not become a Cat 5. I don't see that. I think Cat 3 is the ceiling. I think it may be Cat 4, but I really doubt it. But again, Cat 3 or even strong Cat 2 is significant enough, particularly, Brittany, when you've had such a quiet Atlantic hurricane season, people may have let their guard down.

9:14And also, I want to really emphasize that this storm, even as it moves inland and maybe loses some of its strength, it is going to be a high-impact storm for many of the college football games on Saturday, perhaps even some of the NFL games in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast on Sunday. I encourage people to not risk their lives and safety over a game or so. I don't know what some of the schedules and changes are for those games, but this will be an event that will impact much of the southeast and Gulf Coast states from about late Friday night through about Sunday morning. That's a long-lasting storm.

9:54Like you said, it's a high-impact storm, and you're even going to be experiencing some pretty strong wind gusts where you are in Georgia. So when you're thinking about all of that, what concerns you the most here about the storm? Yeah, I think it's a couple of things. One, just the lack of experience this year with storms. And so, you know, people can quickly get hurricane amnesia. They kind of forget what the impacts are if they haven't really had to deal with it. And we didn't really have any big time landfalling storms last year either. Now Jamaica certainly did with Hurricane Melissa, but that always worries me.

10:29But then it always worries me that people will maybe hear or think because the storm's moving well inland that they don't have anything to worry about. And there are still high winds, extreme flooding, tornado risk that will be present for a good 24-hour period or so in places like Georgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, and so forth. And then And always that storm surge worries me, Brittany. The storm is going to go in around Mobile Bay, but to the right of the center, and I know you know this because we've talked many times in the past, to the right of the center, we call that the dirty side of the eye.

11:06That's where the most significant storm surge, strongest winds, and even tornadic risk are greatest. So, I really worry about those panhandle regions of Florida, even into Georgia, because as As the storm is moving up through Alabama, Georgia and that panhandle is on the right side of the center. And so I think people can let their guard down, like my wife was suggesting, because she just perceived that the storm is over there in Alabama. We don't have to worry about it in Georgia. That's not the case. We could see 40 and 50 mile per hour wind gusts for sustained periods of time in Georgia. That's over tropical storm force winds, and we're nowhere near the center of the storm.

11:46I always really appreciate when you bring up these points on how people should be prepared. People shouldn't let their guard down. And when it comes to this storm, as well as other storms in the past, you see people getting ready and preparing. They buy gas, they fill up their sandbags, they go to the grocery store. You also see people on the other end of the spectrum just hunkering down saying, hey, I survived the past X, Y and Z storm. So I'm good here. I'm just going to ride this one out. How do you think people should best prepare going into the weekend? Well, you know, it's almost too late for those people along the Gulf Coast.

12:17They should have been preparing days in advance. So probably a bit too late at this point to try to get out. But in general, if there are evacuation orders from emergency management officials, you should heed those. I often say that your experience with a past storm does not necessarily guarantee the same outcome with a current or future storm, particularly as we're seeing this stronger generation or more intense generation of hurricanes. So I really urge people not to base outcomes on what happened with an older or prior storm that may not be representative of these generations of storms that are rapidly intensifying almost every time they make landfall.

12:59It's important to just have pre-plans in place. Know where your important cards are, your medical cars and insurance cards have a plan in place. And that's okay for many of us that can do those things. But unfortunately, in many communities, Brittany, there are people even that maybe want to make such plans, but may not have the capacity to evacuate or may not have the ability to drive 500 miles and stay in a hotel for a couple of days. And so I always worry about the most vulnerable parts of our communities as well, particularly elderly and those on the lower end of the socioeconomic scale. We are thinking about those people as well.

13:41But looking ahead to the rest of hurricane season, like we've been saying, it's really late in the season for this to be the first hurricane. But does that signal anything to you about the rest of the hurricane season, which concludes at the end of November? Yeah, we tend to go through November with the hurricane season. Again, we knew it was going to be a quiet season because that's typically what we see with El Nino years. We have one of the strongest, if not the strongest, El Nino that we'll ever see developing, and it doesn't peak until December. So I don't expect a good deal of additional activity.

14:14We could see a stray storm or two over the next couple of weeks, but there's no signal that I see right now. On the other hand though, Brittany, and I've been writing about this pretty regularly at Forbes.com, the Pacific Basin has been very active. You don't tend to see many storms get close to the Hawaiian Islands, but we've had three or four storms in recent weeks get very close to the Hawaiian Islands. That's just very rare, but during El Nino, the Pacific Basin tends to be more active because of all of that hot water in the eastern Pacific. Even as we speak, even though we're talking about Hurricane Isaias right now, there's a storm that's likely going to make landfall near Mexico in the next day or so, and the remnants of a storm are making landfall very close to the California Mexican border, very close to San Diego.

15:04So the Pacific Ocean has been quite active this year. There's certainly a lot to look out for, especially this weekend, but I know you are in the area that could feel the impact. So Dr. Shepard, you stay safe. Thank you so much for your expertise today. Thank you so much, Brittany. Take care.

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