Jim Weber expects Isaias to become 2026's first hurricane, tornadoes and all

The FOX 13 meteorologist's update drew more than a hundred comments in half a day, from a Pensacola viewer bracing for a dark weekend to someone near Philadelphia expecting the leftovers.

Channel: FOX 13 Tampa Bay Story of October 8, 2026Trari Newsroom

Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 245,347 views a day, 22 times a normal first day on this channel (11,107).

Hurricane watch issued ahead of Isaias

The Atlantic hurricane season reached October without a single hurricane, and Isaias looks set to change that. In "Hurricane watch issued ahead of Isaias," FOX 13 meteorologist Jim Weber picks up the storm the morning it formed in the Gulf, drifting slowly east-northeast toward the northern Gulf Coast, where he expects it to come ashore Friday night.

His outlook, as the description sets it out, has a turn in the middle. Isaias should strengthen into a Category 2 hurricane, then lose some of that strength to wind shear before landfall. The warning he stresses most is about tornadoes, which he expects the storm to bring in numbers. Hurricane, storm surge and tropical storm watches went up along the coast the same morning.

That was the update people wanted. Earlier on Wednesday, Dave Osterberg's regular morning forecast had promised widespread rain for Tampa, but Weber's video is the one that ran away, with close to 170,000 views in its first twelve hours, on a day when the channel as a whole was a little below its normal pace.

The comments moved even faster: more than a hundred by the twelve-hour mark, where a full first day for the station's longer videos usually brings a handful. A viewer in Pensacola is planning a weekend without power or internet, Central Florida viewers ask whether the track could still bend their way, and the storm's name gets its share of questions, starting with whether it is simply Isaiah in English. It is, in Spanish.

The most sobering note comes from Florida's Nature Coast, where one viewer recalls feeling safe as Helene passed offshore, then watching the surge arrive, and says the rebuilding still is not done. For FOX 13's audience, a Gulf storm aimed somewhere else is never quite somewhere else.

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More from FOX 13 Tampa BayVideo taking off 21x its usual first dayIsaias in the Gulf? Valerie Mills weighs wind shear against the rain for FOX 13The Tampa station's forecast points past its own viewers, toward the western Panhandle and Louisiana, and people along that coast showed up in the comments.Channel: FOX 13 Tampa Bay · Story of October 7, 2026

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The numbers

One storm update ran far ahead of everything else the Tampa station posted, in views and even more in comments.

the video's first day

usual first day here

11,107

this video

245,347

subscribers

1,080,000

no significant change in the last 7 days

total views

1,067,981,444

views per day

289,682

typical day: 345,812

the video

views

168,529

likes

741

comments

126

days online

1

compared with similar channels (subscribers)

FOX 11 Los Angeles

1,360,000

CBS New York

1,200,000

CBS LA

1,160,000

FOX 13 Tampa Bay

1,080,000

FOX 4 Dallas-Fort Worth

1,020,000

FOX 5 New York

1,000,000

As of October 8, 2026 · Data source: Trari Social News, Trari Traffic Trends and Ranking Platform, Google YouTube

Subscriber, view, like and comment counts are YouTube's. Rates, usual days, rankings, comparisons and categories are Trari's own calculations.

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