It may have been a quiet hurricane season up until Hurricane Isaias hit parts of Florida and Alabama over the weekend. For Gulf Coast residents, the impact was another clear example of how human-caused ocean warming is changing what was deemed normal for generations.

With more than a month until hurricane season ends, Isaias’ wrath uprooted trees, tore roofs from homes, and flooded neighborhoods. Officials have linked at least five deaths to the storm.

Across the region, recovery remained unfinished days after landfall. On Oct. 12, roughly 146,000 homes and businesses in Florida remained without electricity, with outages concentrated in Escambia and Santa Rosa counties. Multiple counties remained under boil-water notices.

“Even with a storm that feels relatively small, there is so much Black families have to to worry about,” said Jamil Davis, a North Florida resident and community organizer. “There is insurance, not to mention the immediate things related to work and keeping a roof over your head.”

A quieter hurricane season doesn’t mean a safe one. While human-induced climate change has produced more frequent intense storms in recent years, climate change does not always equal more storms. It does mean, researchers have made clear, that with warmer oceans and a wetter atmosphere, storms that do form will be more powerful, rainier, and more likely to intensify quickly. This season has underscored that distinction.

The Atlantic went through September without a single hurricane, the longest wait for the season’s first hurricane since record keeping began. Then came Isaias, which strengthened from a tropical storm into a hurricane within just a few hours on Oct. 7. Historically, it takes several days to a week for a tropical storm to intensify into a hurricane. 

By Oct. 9, Isaias was a major Category 3 storm bearing down on the Gulf Coast. It weakened to Category 2 before making landfall near Destin, Florida, later that day.

Meanwhile, in the Pacific, the remnants of Hurricane Rachel battered Southern California with rain, gusty winds, and flooding that swallowed cars and the first stories of homes along beach communities. In a typical year, the Pacific hurricane season averages 15 named storms. This year has already seen 20. 

For Black families, Davis said, the damage can threaten homes owned for decades, leaving residents to figure out how to rebuild without insurance coverage or timely government assistance. Black Voters Matter is pushing for aid that pays for a safe place to sleep and the first stages of cleanup, so families are not left relying on neighbors and donated supplies while waiting for recovery funds.

Black families are more likely to live in flood zones and typically receive less recovery aid from both the federal government and private insurers. 

Hurricane Isaias caused an estimated $1 billion to $2 billion in lost economic output through closures, power outages, and other disruptions, according to a preliminary Moody’s Analytics analysis. The report is a measure of interrupted economic activity, not the cost of repairing damaged homes and infrastructure. In total, more than 1 million homes were in the storm’s wind zone and storm surge zone.

Outside Mobile, Alabama, Severia Campbell-Morris said she briefly lost power twice in her majority-Black community. Her town, Prichard, Alabama, has spent years confronting a water crisis made worse by disintegrating federal funds and climate change. During heavy Gulf Coast rains, millions of gallons of raw sewage overflow into neighborhood ditches, streets, and creeks across the town, contaminating people’s drinking water and homes. 

This season’s strong El Niño weather pattern helped suppress Atlantic hurricane development, but it contributed to raised storm activity in the Pacific. But Isaias encountered record-warm Gulf waters that helped fuel its rapid intensification, with winds increasing 40 mph in 24 hours. Human-caused warming made those unusually high water temperatures several hundred times more likely in the western Gulf, according to Climate Central. 

In Pensacola, several residents at an apartment complex had to relocate after a large section of the building’s roof flew off. And across Florida and Alabama, trees fell on hundreds of homes. 

“We could hear the trees snapping in the backyard and when it hit the house,” Erica Andrews, 56, of Milton, Florida, told the Tallahassee Democrat. “This was the worst one. I will never stay through another one again, I don’t think. It was just really different than any other hurricane we’ve had.”

Davis, who previously lived in Pensacola, wants Florida utility regulators to disclose how spending to strengthen storm-exposed power infrastructure compares with spending to serve data centers.

“If you’re spending more on data centers than you are on that, then our priorities as a state are out of whack,” he said.

In the meantime, Davis described organizers carrying donated supplies into hard-hit Panhandle communities, filling needs while residents awaited government help. For him, preparedness means sustaining those community networks before disaster strikes, not scrambling to build them afterward. 

“And so if nobody else has us, we got us,” Davis said.

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Adam Mahoney is the climate and environment reporter at Capital B. He can be reached by email at adam.mahoney@capitalbnews.org, on Bluesky, and on X at @AdamLMahoney.