Hurricane Isaias is coming. What could it hit- - BBC News.

Breaking news overnight. This year's first Atlantic hurricane targeting millions on the Gulf Coast. I hadn't heard about a hurricane. A hurricane is going in the vicinity of Alabama. That's not good. All hazards in play, including storm surge, including wind that could cause some damage and knock down some power, the threat for tornadoes, and certainly the threat for seeing inland flooding, because this will bring with it a substantial amount of rain. I've gone and gotten gas. I've gotten cash. I went and got dog food that I needed. So just when you thought we were going to get away with not having a storm in the Atlantic Basin, here comes Hurricane Isaias. It has been a record-breakingly quiet Atlantic hurricane season, but now a hurricane barreling towards the U.S. Gulf Coast has everyone, including oil and gas companies, worried. Major offshore oil platforms are being evacuated. Florida and Alabama, both are in states of emergency. And over the next 10 minutes or so, we'll look at the path of the hurricane, the impact it could have on the oil markets, and how El Nino is involved in a way you might not expect. First, though, let's get a sense of what is actually coming. Here's Chris Fawkes from BBC Weather. Hurricane Isaias has formed in the Gulf. Now, on the satellite picture, you can see the centre of the storm here. But you'll notice a lot of high cloud being blown northwards and eastwards across Florida. Now, that's happening because we've got actually strong winds blowing across the hurricane, and hurricanes really don't like strong winds. It stops them from rapidly intensifying. Nevertheless, this hurricane is going to strengthen a little bit over the next 24 hours as it pushes northwards. It could even reach Category 3 hurricane status for a time. But we think at the point of landfall, which will be Friday night around the Alabama-Florida border region, we think it's going to have sustained winds of around 105 miles an hour, making it a Category 2 hurricane with some stronger gusts. Now, winds this strong will blow down some trees, they'll bring down power lines, so power cuts are very likely, and there could be a few roofs blown off buildings, so some structural damage is a possibility. But with hurricanes, actually, it's not the winds that cause the majority of fatalities, it's water hazards, and those water hazards account for nearly 90% of fatalities within hurricanes and tropical cyclones. Now with 250 millimetres of rain on the way we are likely to see some flooding issues as that rain works inland and there could be some severe flooding with that but the other water hazard is the storm surge and that accounts for about 49% of fatalities so actually it's one of the deadliest features a hurricane has. A storm surge is where we get a bulge of water being blown inland by the hurricane's winds. Where that coincides with high tides we can get a lot of water high above normal tidal conditions and so this storm surge where it combines with high tides the water could be one and a half to 2.1 metres above normal levels and that will lead to some coastal inundation and potentially some severe flooding. So with the potential to increase to a category three by the time it makes landfall it's got people worried. Many have been stocking up on food, water and supplies and hundreds have been working to prepare their houses and communities for any flooding and strong winds coming their way. Rob Marciano from CBS News is on the Florida coast and sent us this update. Welcome to Pensacola, Florida. This is the north coast of the Gulf, which has some of the most beautiful beaches in the world. This crushed quartz white sand, the beautiful aqua blue water here, which is just slightly agitated and slightly higher than it typically would be because we have a hurricane not terribly far from here, about 300 miles to our south. The question is, how strong is it when it makes landfall somewhere around here? Now that it's in the Gulf, there's going to be a U.S. landfall. There's no doubt about that. It's just a matter of where and how strong. Hurricane warnings are up for Pensacola, east of Panama City. For viewers that know the Gulf Shores of Alabama, Mobile, and Biloxi, Mississippi, those areas are under hurricane warnings as well, which means that all hazards in play, including storm surge, including winds that could cause some damage and knock down some power, the threat for tornadoes, and certainly the threat for seeing inland flooding, because this will bring with it a substantial amount of rain. So just when you thought we were going to get away with not having a storm in the Atlantic Basin, here comes Hurricane Isaias. Yes, that's what's coming. It also has the major oil and gas companies really worried. Shell, BP, Chevron have started evacuating workers from a number of their offshore platforms platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. Officials say a quarter of production in the Gulf is now shut down and it's a vital region for U.S. production, accounting for 15 percent of crude oil pumped annually in the U.S. Oil markets are already stretched by the war in the Middle East, so the approaching hurricane has sent prices even higher. Here's our North America business correspondent Samira Hussain. Oil companies operating in the Gulf of Mexico are accustomed to hurricanes. This is the first one of the season, and it comes at a time when the price of oil is already really high, a result of the US war with Iran. The big oil operators in the region, Chevron, Shell and BP, are executing a number of measures to protect their operations, either shutting in or halting production altogether and evacuating non-essential personnel. But the big question is how much this will likely impact oil production. And That really depends on the strength of the hurricane and how much damage it leaves in its wake. If production is shut down for a few days, markets can probably withstand that and we won't see significant moves on how much oil is. But if the hurricane is severe and production is shut down for weeks, well, that could have a greater impact on the price of oil. Now, for now, oil traders are already pricing in a potential fallout from the hurricane, which is why, in part, you're seeing jumps in the price of Brent crude at the moment. Now, remember, this is not new for oil companies operating in the region. They are adept at these kinds of temporary shutdowns, and their facilities are built to weather these kinds of storms. Well, it has been an eerily quiet Atlantic hurricane season so far. By this time last year, there'd been already four hurricanes. Rewind to 2024, nine Atlantic hurricanes had been recorded by October the 8th. In fact, this hurricane has formed so late in the year, it has broken the record as the latest first Atlantic hurricane ever. And it's come so late, it even caught people by surprise, including Donald Trump, who's actually set to be in Alabama for a college football game on Saturday. I hadn't heard about a hurricane. A hurricane is going in the vicinity of Alabama? That's not good. Certainly, I'm going to let the hurricane determine. I want people to be safe. Well, that's the president. So why have there been no Atlantic hurricanes this year till now? Here's Chris Fawkes again to explain. Another question we've been asked is why this hurricane season is so quiet. And that's down to El Nino. This is the warm waters that we have at the moment in the tropical Pacific. Now, this changes the atmospheric circulation above. And in the Atlantic, it causes a zone of stronger winds. You might remember a bit ago, I said that hurricanes hate strong winds. and so those stronger winds in the Atlantic mean that we have far fewer hurricanes that form. One of the other things I've noticed this season is we've had quite a lot of Saharan dust coming off the Saharan desert and when that works into higher parts of the atmosphere over the Atlantic Ocean, that layer of dust absorbs heat from the sun, creates a layer of warm air and that can also stop hurricanes from forming. It stops those thunderstorms going through that layer of warm air. So two factors, really, as to why this hurricane season has been so incredibly quiet. So El Nino is having an impact on the weather in the region this year. But will there be any more hurricanes coming before the season actually ends? Here's Chris again. Well, the Atlantic hurricane season stretches from the start of June all the way to the end of November. You can get hurricanes outside of the hurricane season, but they're incredibly rare. The peak of the hurricane season is during the middle to early part of September and we're well past that. At this time of the year the later we get in the season so the less the likelihood is that we'll see another hurricane. But of course this just represents average weather conditions and this year is not average. We've got that El Nino and so that means the risk of seeing a hurricane is much less than in a typical year. So it could well be that Hurricane Isaias is the last Atlantic hurricane that we see this year. And that is the latest on the first Atlantic hurricane of the season and the impact it could have on oil supplies.