Isaias’ remnants are expected to bring significant rain to the Philly area

Having ended a record Atlantic hurricane embargo, Isaias was all but certain to pursue a destructive course through the Southeast and to have impacts all the way to the Northeast corridor during the weekend.

Isaias, which had intensified into a major hurricane with peak winds at 120 mph, made landfall at 9:30 p.m. on the Florida Peninsula as a Category 2 hurricane, with top winds of 105 mph.

On Saturday, it was transitioning to a “hybrid” storm, the National Weather Service said.

It was projected to track north, shedding most of its tropical identity along the way but still producing heavy rains, and then arc northeast, with the core of its leftover possibly passing near the Philly region on Sunday.

A daylong soaking rain, perhaps up to 3 inches in isolated areas, was expected Sunday around Philly, the National Weather Service office in Mount Holly said.

However, meteorologists were confident the effects around here wouldn’t approach those of the 2020 version of Isaias.

This one would be a rainstorm with a name, but urbanized flooding is possible, said Richard Bann, branch forecaster at the federal Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Md. He said this would be quite the “moist air mass,” and “embedded thunderstorms” are in play, which could kick up wind gusts.

An isolated tornado, especially south of the city, couldn’t be ruled out, said weather service meteorologist Alex Staarmann.

In any event or nonevent, expect a “really rainy day on Sunday,” Bann said.

After what should be a postcard October Saturday with sun and highs in the 70s, the rains are likely to begin by mid- to late Sunday morning, said Staarmann.

It is expected to continue heavily into the evening, after which showers could linger into Monday morning.

The highest probability of severe weather would be in Delaware and South Jersey, Staarmann said, and that likely would be during the night.

Isaias’ tropical moisture remains would be drawn northward by another weather system. Just how much of the rain would be the result of the remnant hurricane would be difficult to distill.

As Paul Walker, retired meteorologist with AccuWeather Inc., has observed, the raindrops, too, have letters on them.

Isaias already has made history by smashing the El Niño-imposed Atlantic hurricane barricade.

It was the longest wait for a verified first hurricane in well over 100 years.

Behind the storm embargo, the El Niño warming of the equatorial Pacific generated shearing winds from the west that kept tropical storms in the Atlantic Basin, which includes the Gulf and Caribbean, from maturing.

Isaias did encounter “some shear,” said Dan Pydynkowski, forecast-operations supervisor at AccuWeather Inc., but “it’s held together pretty well.”

It is forecast to generate a destructive storm surge and profoundly heavy, flooding rains in the Southeast.

Meteorologists warned that the forecasts may become moving targets during the weekend: Strange things are prone to happen when tropical moisture interacts with systems in northern latitudes and with the terrain of the Appalachian Mountains.

If the name “Isaias” rings a familiar bell or two, it’s because its maiden visit to the region was in August 2020. It was not a pleasant encounter.

That Isaias in 2020 never became stronger than a Category 1 hurricane, but it resulted in widespread flooding and knocked out power to 600,000 utility customers in the Philly region.

It spawned two tornadoes and soaked the region with several inches of rain.

Hurricane names get recycled every six years, save for the ones attached to the most-devastating storms, such as Katrina, in 2005.

It happened that 2020 was a remarkably busy season when the hurricane names exhausted the alphabet, and Isaias was just another name.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.