Hurricane Isaias strengthened Friday morning to a Category 3 storm as it makes its way toward Florida’s Gulf Coast.
Isaias is currently on path to make landfall Friday evening along the Northern Gulf Coast stretching from Pensacola to the Alabama-Florida state line.
While Gulf residents board windows and make necessary preparations, Gov. Ron DeSantis may still be struggling to pronounce the Spanish-language name.
“I don’t know how to pronounce this because it’s not normal,” the governor said in a conference Thursday.
“I’m calling it Isaiah. You guys can call it what you want. I know that’s not how you pronounce this, it’s something else. But it’s weird.”
He said rather than butchering it for the next 72, he’s going to call it Isaiah.
DeSantis onThursday made another attempt at pronouncing Isaias at the Division of Emergency Management’s operation center.
“They tried to do this on a tropical storm a few years ago, and I’m just thinking to myself: We’ve got this wonderful English language. Couldn’t you used Isabella or something like that?”
Isaias, which is the Spanish and Portuguese form of the historically biblical name Isaiah, was chosen off a pre-set rotating list that includes English, Spanish and French names for Atlantic storms. It was selected this year as a Spanish-language entry for the “I” slot after the English-language name Ike was retired after 2008’s catastrophic Hurricane Ike.
DeSantis issued an executive order earlier this week for 27 counties mostly concentrated in Northern and Northwest Florida.
Hurricane Isaias is expected to bring significant impacts in the Panhandle, DeSantis said Friday morning. It’s now a Category 3 storm, with sustained winds reaching up to 120 mph. The governor says there is expectation for the storm to weaken ahead of making landfall, but the state and its residents should prepare for a major hurricane to be safe.
