Isaias Is on the Move

Bands of heavy rain from Isaias lashed Florida's east coast Sunday, with the tropical storm strengthening slightly in the evening on its way up the Eastern seabord, the AP reports. Officials dealing with surging cases of the coronavirus in Florida kept a close watch on the storm that was weakened from a hurricane to a tropical storm Saturday afternoon, but still brought heavy rain and flooding to Florida's Atlantic coast. The National Hurricane Center advised at 5pm ET Sunday that the storm was about 65 miles off the midpoint of Florida's east coast, and about 410 miles south of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. It was strengthening slightly with sustained winds just under a category 1 hurricane, taking a north-northwest path, according to the center.

• Upper-level winds took much of the strength out of Isaias, said Stacy Stewart, senior hurricane specialist at the hurricane center in Miami. "We were expecting a hurricane to develop and it didn't," Stewart said Sunday. "It's a tale of two storms. If you live on the west side of the storm, you didn't get much. If you live east of the storm, there's a lot of nasty weather there."
• Authorities closed beaches, parks, and virus testing sites, lashing signs to palm trees so they wouldn't blow away. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said the state is anticipating power outages and asked residents to have a week’s supply of water, food, and medicine on hand.
• In Palm Beach County, about 150 people were in shelters, said emergency management spokeswoman Lisa De La Rionda. The county has a voluntary evacuation order for those living in mobile or manufactured homes, or those who feel their home can't withstand winds.
• The storm's maximum sustained winds declined steadily throughout Saturday, and were at 65 mph at 2pm ET Sunday, before crawling back up to 70 mph a few hours later, the hurricane center said.
• "The center of Isaias will move offshore of the coast of Georgia and southern South Carolina on Monday, move inland over eastern North Carolina Monday night and move along the coast of the mid-Atlantic states on Tuesday," according to the hurricane center.
• A Tropical Storm Watch has been extended northward to Watch Hill, Rhode Island, including the Chesapeake Bay, Delaware Bay, Long Island, and Long Island Sound.

(More tropical storms stories.)