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The storm surge could reach four feet in parts of eastern Florida.
Florida is preparing for winds as high as 75 miles per hour and dangerous coastal surf on Saturday as the season’s ninth named storm, Hurricane Isaias, makes its way north.
The storm, a low-level Category 1 hurricane, raked parts of Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic and has begun to batter the Bahamas. It is on a path up the Atlantic coast toward the Carolinas.
The storm is expected to travel up the coast of Florida, which was already battling a surge of coronavirus cases. A hurricane watch was in effect early Saturday morning from Hallandale Beach to south of Boca Raton, and a hurricane warning from Boca Raton to Brevard County. There could be storm surges up to four feet high.
The storm is then expected to weaken and be off the coast of Georgia and South Carolina on Monday.
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 Hurricane 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.
“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 Hurricane 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 Hurricane 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.
Reporting was contributed by Henry Fountain, Frances Robles and Will Wright.
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