This briefing has ended. For the latest updates on the storm, click here.
Here’s what you need to know:
- Isaias was downgraded to a tropical storm as it continues to move toward Florida’s coastline.
- Shelters began opening in Palm Beach County.
- Nursing homes, already tested by the pandemic, may be vulnerable.
- Florida is closing state-run coronavirus testing sites in the storm’s path.
- Forecasters predicted an active hurricane season, and it seems they were right.
- Astronauts avoided delay return from the International Space Station and are headed home.
Isaias was downgraded to a tropical storm as it continues to move toward Florida’s coastline.
After battering the Bahamas and raking parts of Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic with hurricane strength wind and rain, Isaias was downgraded Saturday evening to a tropical storm.
Still, it continued its slow churn toward Florida’s coastline, and state officials said the storm would likely regain its strength as the evening progressed.
“Don’t be fooled by the downgrade,” warned Gov. Ron DeSantis at a news conference.
Floridians spent Saturday preparing for wind gusts up to 80 miles per hour and dangerous coastal surf. And forecasters said they expected Isaias to again become a Category 1 hurricane before scraping Florida’s coast.
Isaias’s projected path shifted slightly eastward, forecasters said, and was expected to possibly make landfall near Palm Beach, Jacksonville and other coastal areas in the storm’s possible path.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency offered federal disaster assistance to the state on Saturday, a move approved by President Trump, the agency announced in a statement.
Miami is no longer in the “cone” that signals the storm's possible paths, but the National Weather Service warned that the region could still see floods from heavy rain and damage from strong winds.
Up the coast, officials in Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina were closely monitoring the storm, which is expected to move north and could scrape the coasts of any of those states.
Like Florida, those three states have seen a dramatic rise in new reported cases of the coronavirus since mid-June, and more recently, health officials have warned that their health-care systems could be strained beyond capacity with the flood of new patients. Emergency management officials have been drawing up new plans to deal with people fleeing amid the virus, including placing people in hotel rooms instead of congregate shelters like basketball gyms.
Even so, Keith Acree, a North Carolina emergency management spokesman, said the state was urging coastal residents to make plans to stay with family or friends further inland. “A shelter this year is not really where you want to be this year during a pandemic,” he said.
As of 2 a.m. Sunday, the tropical storm was about 70 miles southeast of Fort Lauderdale and 90 miles southeast of West Palm Beach, moving toward the coast at about 8 miles per hour. Its winds were swirling at about 70 m.p.h., just under the 74 m.p.h. threshold that would make it a Category 1 hurricane.
In Florida, a hurricane warning remains in effect from Boca Raton to the northern edge of Volusia County, which includes Daytona Beach. A tropical storm warning extends from the northern border of Volusia County to the coast just southeast of Jacksonville. And a tropical storm watch reaches about 40 miles north of Charleston, S.C.
Weather forecasters said dangerous storm surges up to four feet high in some parts of Florida were possible.
Flooding caused by Isaias led to at least one death in Puerto Rico, where a woman drowned in the municipality of Rincón, in the northwest of the island, the Puerto Rico Department of Public Safety announced Saturday in a statement. The woman had gone missing on Thursday, the authorities said.
The storm is expected to weaken and be off the coast of Georgia on Monday morning, and off the coast of South Carolina by Monday evening.
Shelters began opening in Palm Beach County.
Palm Beach County opened four general population centers at one middle school and three high schools Saturday morning as Isaias continued to stretch up the Atlantic Coast. The shelters are available only to residents who live in mobile homes or “sub-standard” housing, the county said.
As of Saturday afternoon, there were 150 people at the shelters, officials said.
Individuals older than 2 will be required to wear face coverings, and temperature screenings will be conducted for all residents who want to enter the shelters. The county noted that social distancing protocols would be in effect, and families staying at the shelters would be kept further apart from each other. The county also said it would open one pet friendly shelter for animals.
Still, county officials on Saturday urged residents to stay home and avoid congregating in settings like shelters, if possible. For those living in less stable housing, such as mobile homes, officials recommended sheltering with a family member or friend who resides in a sturdy home, or relocating to a hotel.
Bill Johnson, the emergency management director for Palm Beach County, said on Saturday that storm conditions would begin impacting the county in the evening. The county has issued a voluntary evacuation order for residents who live in evacuation Zone A, which includes mobile and manufactured homes.
“There is Covid in every aspect of your hurricane preparedness needs,” Mr. Johnson said at a news conference on Friday. “Shelters should be considered your last resort.”
Nursing homes, already tested by the pandemic, may be vulnerable.
Three years after a dozen nursing home residents died during Hurricane Irma, Florida’s former ombudsman warned that Isaias will test nursing homes already battling the coronavirus pandemic.
Lawmakers passed regulations after air-conditioners failed at one home in 2017, leading to heat-related deaths. They mandated that nursing homes install backup generators in case of severe weather.
But this May, the state issued 95 variances — passes that allow facilities to operate despite noncompliance — to nursing homes that had not met the emergency requirements, according to The Miami Herald.
The former ombudsman, Brian Lee, who now runs Families for Better Care, an advocacy group for nursing home and elder-care residents, said he doubted state officials who said the nursing homes were prepared.
“I can’t imagine that these facilities are prepped and ready to handle a pandemic and a hurricane simultaneously,” Mr. Lee said. “They are going to be over their heads and under water. It is a total recipe for disaster.”
Kristen Knapp, a spokeswoman for the Florida Health Care Association, which lobbies for nursing homes, said that not every nursing home that applied for a variance was without a generator. Some facilities applied for other reasons, including that they had not been able to perform inspections because of the coronavirus, she said.
According to records from Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration, some nursing homes that were approved for variances were without generators as recently as March, and were allowed to operate without generators until June 1.
An agency spokesman said in an email that all nursing homes and assisted living facilities have generators on site.
Some facilities plan to shelter in place rather than evacuate residents. Mr. Lee said he was concerned that social distancing would be impossible if dozens of residents were gathered in a common space.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Updated July 27, 2020
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Should I refinance my mortgage?
- It could be a good idea, because mortgage rates have never been lower. Refinancing requests have pushed mortgage applications to some of the highest levels since 2008, so be prepared to get in line. But defaults are also up, so if you’re thinking about buying a home, be aware that some lenders have tightened their standards.
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What is school going to look like in September?
- It is unlikely that many schools will return to a normal schedule this fall, requiring the grind of online learning, makeshift child care and stunted workdays to continue. California’s two largest public school districts — Los Angeles and San Diego — said on July 13, that instruction will be remote-only in the fall, citing concerns that surging coronavirus infections in their areas pose too dire a risk for students and teachers. Together, the two districts enroll some 825,000 students. They are the largest in the country so far to abandon plans for even a partial physical return to classrooms when they reopen in August. For other districts, the solution won’t be an all-or-nothing approach. Many systems, including the nation’s largest, New York City, are devising hybrid plans that involve spending some days in classrooms and other days online. There’s no national policy on this yet, so check with your municipal school system regularly to see what is happening in your community.
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Is the coronavirus airborne?
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What are the symptoms of coronavirus?
- Common symptoms include fever, a dry cough, fatigue and difficulty breathing or shortness of breath. Some of these symptoms overlap with those of the flu, making detection difficult, but runny noses and stuffy sinuses are less common. The C.D.C. has also added chills, muscle pain, sore throat, headache and a new loss of the sense of taste or smell as symptoms to look out for. Most people fall ill five to seven days after exposure, but symptoms may appear in as few as two days or as many as 14 days.
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Does asymptomatic transmission of Covid-19 happen?
- So far, the evidence seems to show it does. A widely cited paper published in April suggests that people are most infectious about two days before the onset of coronavirus symptoms and estimated that 44 percent of new infections were a result of transmission from people who were not yet showing symptoms. Recently, a top expert at the World Health Organization stated that transmission of the coronavirus by people who did not have symptoms was “very rare,” but she later walked back that statement.
“You get 120 residents and their caregivers in a large room in the middle of a pandemic — social distancing is out the window,” Mr. Lee said. “This pandemic is really a threat to the residents in these facilities, not just from a health care perspective, but for natural disasters as well.”
Florida is closing state-run coronavirus testing sites in the storm’s path.
Gov. Ron DeSantis said on Friday that state-run coronavirus testing sites, which are mostly housed under tents at outdoor venues, will be closed if they are within Isaias’s anticipated path.
Many testing sites would be unsafe for lab personnel during the storm’s wind and rain, Mr. DeSantis said during a news conference on Friday. Labs run by private companies, hospitals and local county health departments will not be affected by the state’s closure.
The governor, a Republican, had planned to close all of the state’s testing sites from Friday to Wednesday. But the Division of Emergency Management eventually said it would keep testing sites open in counties that should be unaffected.
In Miami-Dade County, the center of Florida’s coronavirus outbreak, Mayor Carlos Gimenez ordered the county-run sites to close from Friday until at least Monday.
The county has recorded more than 20,000 cases in the past seven days.
“We have thousands of tests that will not be conducted until we get these test sites up and running again,” Mr. Gimenez said during a news conference on Friday. “We have to put safety first.”
On Thursday, Florida recorded 253 deaths, the state’s most deaths in a single day. While the number of daily new cases has declined in the second half of July, the number of daily deaths has trended upward.
Forecasters predicted an active hurricane season, and it seems they were right.
Because of warm ocean temperatures and other conditions this year, weather experts said in May that there would probably be more than the average of 12 named storms.
The season, which runs from June 1 to November 30, is only one-third over, and Isaias is already its ninth named storm, which requires maximum sustained winds above 38 miles per hour.
June and July are usually quiet, which means the 2020 season could approach the record of 27 named storms set in 2005 — the only time the National Hurricane Center had to use Greek letters for some names.
Two factors combine to make the August to October period more active. Ocean warmth, which provides the energy that fuels tropical storms and hurricanes, reaches its peak in late summer. And differential winds that can weaken storms by disrupting their rotating, or cyclonic, structure are at their quietest.
Of the nine storms so far, seven were tropical storms, with wind speeds below 74 miles an hour. The first hurricane, Hanna, which struck South Texas last week, was a Category 1 storm, with winds below 96 m.p.h. and so far Isaias’s strength is about the same.
So while the season is busy, it remains to be seen whether another of the predictions by the experts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are borne out. They forecast that three to six storms this season would be major hurricanes, with sustained winds of 111 m.p.h. or higher.
Astronauts avoided delay return from the International Space Station and are headed home.
Returning to Earth
The SpaceX Crew Dragon is scheduled to splash down near Florida on Sunday, though Hurricane Isaias could change those plans.
Category
2
1
Tropical storm
Forecasted path of Hurricane Isaias
Atlantic Ocean
Mon. 2 a.m.
Seven possible
splashdown sites
(approximate)
Gulf of Mexico
Sun. 2 a.m.
Sat. 2 a.m.
Last updated Sat. 9 a.m.
Category
2
1
Tropical storm
Forecasted path of Hurricane Isaias
Mon. 2 a.m.
Seven possible
splashdown sites
(approximate)
Gulf of Mexico
Sun. 2 a.m.
Sat. 2 a.m.
Last updated Sat. 9 a.m.
Category
2
1
Tropical storm
Forecasted path of Hurricane Isaias
Mon.
2 a.m.
Seven possible
splashdown sites
(approximate)
Gulf of Mexico
Sun.
2 a.m.
Last updated Sat. 9 a.m.
Though Isaias threatened to delay the return trip of two Florida-bound astronauts who have been aboard the International Space Station since June, they were able to undock and begin their long journey home.
The astronauts, Robert L. Behnken and Douglas G. Hurley, blasted off to the space station in May in the Crew Dragon capsule built and operated by SpaceX, the rocket company started by Elon Musk. They are scheduled to splash down on Sunday afternoon.
NASA and SpaceX have seven potential sites in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico where the capsule and its passengers can splash down. But the track of Isaias ruled out the three in the Atlantic.
At the splashdown site, winds must be less than 10 miles per hour, and there are additional constraints on waves and rain. In addition, helicopters that take part in the recovery of the capsule must be able to fly and land safely.
The spacecraft undocked from the space station at about 7:35 p.m. on Saturday and, if the weather conditions remain favorable, it is scheduled to splash down in the Gulf of Mexico off Pensacola, Fla., at 2:41 p.m. on Sunday, NASA announced.
Reporting was contributed by Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, Kenneth Chang, Richard Fausset, Henry Fountain, Patricia Mazzei, Giulia McDonnell Nieto del Rio,Frances Robles and Will Wright.
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Tracking Isaias: Live Updates - The New York Times
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