Isaac ‘a non-event’ for Dougherty, much of SOWEGA, official says (updated)

ALBANY, Ga. — While Louisiana, Mississippi and parts of Texas brace for high winds and torrents of rain from Hurricane Isaac, for much of Southwest Georgia, the storm is only expected to offer much-needed rain.

Deputy Dougherty Emergency Management Agency Director Jim Vaught says that the most recent predictions for Isaac’s impact on Georgia forecast nearly no chance for severe weather and only a small chance for any significant rain. The primary effect has been a jump in gas pump prices to $3.75.

“Anything we’ll see will be just because of the shear size of the storm,” Vaught said. “All of the flash flooding watches have been pulled for the area, all of the severe weather watches have been pulled and in Dougherty County, rainfall is expected to be between 0.6 of an inch to, in the worst-case-scenario, 2 inches.

“It’s become a non-event for us,” Vaught said.

That wasn’t the case last week when Georgia Emergency Management officials and federal weather experts were predicting a track for Isaac that put it coming along Florida’s west coast and up through the panhandle before making its way into Southwest Georgia.

“It just goes to show you how unpredictable these storms are,” Vaught said.

Isaac officially became a category 1 hurricane Tuesday afternoon.

Meteorologists expected it to make landfall in Southern Louisiana as either a strong category 1 or possibly a category 2 storm; dumping up to 20 inches of rain in some areas, and causing up to 12-foot storm surges along the coastal regions of Louisiana and Mississippi.