HURRICANE ISAIAS: Did North Carolina underestimate the storm?

View The Original Article Here

Isaias, which strengthened to a hurricane just before making landfall late Monday, hit Brunswick County on a full moon at high tide

BRUNSWICK COUNTY — Holden Beach Mayor Alan Holden knew his evacuation order was not going to be popular.

Like many North Carolina beach towns, summer renters are the lifeblood of the local economy. But as Tropical Storm — later Hurricane — Isaias spun off the Florida coast with a potential path that could bring it close to Southeastern North Carolina, Holden ordered all visitors out of his Brunswick County beach town by 7 p.m. Saturday.

Holden Beach was one of only a few communities along the coast — one of the others being the neighboring town of Ocean Isle Beach — to order a mandatory evacuation of non-residents as Isaias approached the Tar Heel State.

“Yep, a lot of heat,” the mayor, chuckling, said Wednesday morning about his order. “A lot of heat.”

But no one is second guessing Holden’s decision now after Hurricane Isaias slammed into the Brunswick County coast on a full moon at near high tide, pummeling beaches and low-lying areas with powerful wind gusts and 5-foot storm surge that sent sand washing into streets and tossed boats around like rag dolls.

Holden Beach didn’t escape unscathed, Holden said, with broken docks and rising waters in its canal systems. But it could have been potentially a lot worse if his island was full of vacationers who don’t know what to do in a hurricane situation.

“Blame it on a lifetime of experience and a whole lot of luck,” said the mayor, whose family founded Holden Beach. “We lived real good this time, thank the Lord, but do feel for our neighbors in Ocean Isle Beach and Oak Island.”

Making preparations

While deaths and injuries from Isaias were low, with the only known fatalities from a storm-spawned tornado that blew threw a mobile home park in Bertie County, it left a trail of wind-driven destruction that surprised many.

So did North Carolina officials and residents underestimate the storm’s threat, especially considering the coastal carnage and massive power outages it caused?

In a Tuesday afternoon press conference, Gov. Roy Cooper said he thought the state and local emergency officials were prepared for whatever Isaias would bring to North Carolina. Pre-storm steps taken by the state included activating members of the National Guard, prepositioning swift-water rescue teams, and declaring a state of emergency.

But storm forecasting, especially intensity, is inherently unpredictable.

“I think, though, they were somewhat surprised at the amount of storm surge, the fact that it was high tide, the fact that this storm did strengthen and become Category 1,” the governor said. “I think that they had not expected that much water in Brunswick County. I’ve been talking to some of the local leaders down there, and they have some significant damage along the coast. Thankfully, as far as we know, no injuries for that.”

‘Something that is difficult’

Forecasters have become skilled at predicting the track of a hurricane in the past 20 years, said Jonathan Blaes, the meteorologist in charge at the U.S. National Weather Service office in Raleigh. The forecast for Isaias’s route proved to be “very, very good,” he said.

Forecasters also predicted the storm would become a weak hurricane, he said, and that’s what happened.

But there is more to the forecast.

“What often the struggle is with — is with the intensity and structure of a storm,” Blaes said. “Those are very small-scale processes that still, to this day, we have a hard time sampling and understanding everything that’s going on inside the tropical cyclone and everything around it.

“And so the hurricane intensity forecasts struggle a great deal. They’ve gotten better, but it’s still — it is still something that is difficult.”

Isaias lacked strong organization as a hurricane, Blaes said. It didn’t have a well-defined classic symmetrical hurricane shape and a well-defined eye, he said.

As a result, some areas had less wind and rain and some had more, and the intense areas were not evenly distributed around the storm. It’s hard for forecasters to predict which parts will be strong and what will be weak, Blaes said.

So with Isaias, intense spots were more localized.

“But, like a lot of things, what people note, and what they talk about, is really what happened in their area,” Blaes said.

“So there are going to be spots where it rained a lot more than maybe they expected, or a lot less, or the winds are stronger than they expected, and that kind of thing. And so there are definitely some spots down along the coast — Oak Island, and parts of Brunswick County, I guess — where for them, they got quite a bit of of surge and other things and it probably surprised them a little bit.”

Meanwhile, on the west side of the storm, which went along the Interstate 95 corridor, the winds were weaker than would have been expected with a better developed storm, Blaes said.

‘A good lesson’

Frank Williams, chairman of the Brunswick County Commissioners, said he thought his county was prepared for the storm — whether it was a mostly rain event like early predictions had envisioned or the wind event that it turned out to be.

He wasn’t so sure about residents.

“People tend to have the idea that it’s just a Category 1, or just a tropical storm, but I think this one surprised us,” Williams said. “It was a good lesson.”

He added that while Isaias won’t go down as one of the strongest storms to strike Brunswick County, it did more damage to the county’s beaches than the bigger and more powerful Hurricanes Matthew in 2016 and Florence in 2018.

“The lesson is don’t underestimate what looks like a weak storm on paper,” Williams said.

While Brunswick County did open some shelters for evacuees, New Hanover County did not.

Steven Still, head of New Hanover County Emergency Management, said Isaias was an unusual storm.

“For me, it’s an anomaly that a storm increases speed and has an increased wind threat before it makes landfall,” he said. “Usually, you see the opposite.”

Yet even with the storm strengthening late, Still said he wasn’t second-guessing the county’s decision not to open any shelters.

He said the county had been making it clear from the early days of the coronavirus pandemic in March that shelters shouldn’t be a preferred option during a storm evacuation — a message that was reinforced by the state in recent days.

“Our message was do not anticipate that the county will be able to provide a shelter for you,” Still said on Wednesday. “You need to have your own emergency plan in place based on your own circumstances.”

The lack of demand for shelter space showed that message was resonating, he added, noting that the county has reached out to local social and homeless groups before Isaias to make sure vulnerable residents had safe places to go during the storm.

Still said he likes to think that there were no deaths or injuries and few reports of property damage from the storm means most people took the county’s warnings about Isaias to heart.

But he knows that the lack of serious impacts this time around could make it harder to get the preparedness message out next time.

“We have these events that are moderate in nature and it leads to people letting their guard down, and we don’t want that,” Still said. “Folks need to remember that we’re only in August, the very beginning of the busy season for us.

‘Powerful punch’

Along with its beach-bashing surf, Isaias also will be remembered for the massive power outages it left in its path.

At the height of the outages, more than 365,000 customers in mostly Southeastern North Carolina were without power. That compared to nearly 900,000 customers that lost power during Florence, albeit over a much larger area and from a much more powerful storm.

As of noon Wednesday, nearly 29,000 customers — mostly in New Hanover, Brunswick and Beaufort counties — were still without power, according to the N.C. Department of Emergency Management.

The strength of Isaias’ winds surprised many.

“Typically, (storms) tend to weaken right before they come ashore, but this one actually gained strength,” said Duke Energy spokesman Jeff Brooks. “I think everybody began to see that it was strengthening right at the last minute and that’s not what people imagined would be the case.”

Brooks estimated 70% of customers in New Hanover County lost power, with around 65% in Onslow losing power as well.

“I’ve worked with a number of hurricanes in recent years, and wind-wise, this one at times was right up there with some of the bigger storms,” Brooks said. “This storm was a fast-mover and one that didn’t leave a lot of flooding behind in most areas, but it did deliver a powerful punch in the areas where it came ashore.”

Brooks said Isaias was a first test for Duke’s storm response amid a pandemic. For past storms, the company housed hundreds or thousands of crew members on large sites like schools or fairgrounds. This year, Duke scattered smaller groups of workers around various inland areas. While Brooks said Duke should have services restored within 48 hours, he said any future larger storms would pose a significant barrier during the pandemic.

Not everyone found Isaias surprising. Karen Sphar of the Southport-Oak Island Area Chamber of Commerce said she’s come to expect the unexpected when it comes to coastal weather.

“We do our best to prepare for each one of them because each one of them is a little different,” she said.

And about the damage caused by Isaias to Brunswick’s beach communities?

“While it looks horrible, give us a little time and we’ll get it all put back together,” Sphar said.

Paul Woolverton in Fayetteville and Brian Gordon in Asheville contributed to this story.

Reporter Gareth McGrath can be reached at GMcGrath@Gannett.com.