Far from the most powerful storm to strike the Eastern Seaboard, Hurricane Isaias nevertheless proved disruptive enough to rival some infrastructure impacts from Superstorm Sandy in 2012 while also raising concerns about the potential of additional doses of destruction arriving in the coming months.
After bringing heavy rains and winds to Puerto Rico and the Bahamas, Isaias had reached Category 1 hurricane status before making landfall in southeastern North Carolina on Aug. 3. On its two-day run up the I-95 corridor, the storm spawned dozens of tornadoes and downed hundreds of power lines that, at one point, caused outages affecting more than 3.5 million utility customers in 13 states.