[holdmuhbeer]

thanks, i'd have to say this one was a pretty wimpy hurricane. Fran and Floyd were much worse as was Hugo.

[Constitution Day]

Same impression I had.

It's a lot worse in other places, though.
My relatives from Petersburg came to stay with my parents here in Rocky Mount; they have been told not to expect power for at least one week.

[dirtboy]

thanks, i'd have to say this one was a pretty wimpy hurricane. Fran and Floyd were much worse as was Hugo.

Three things about Isabel -

1 - the windfield was extremely large - you had tropical-storm force winds several hundred miles out from the center.

2 - because of that size, you had a very large fetch with which to generate waves, and

3 - the alignment of the storm at landfall drove a lot of water up the Chesapeake, causing saltwater flooding a considerable distance away from landfall.

So, yes, if you look at the damage around where the storm made landfall, it wasn't that powerful. But if you look at the total affected area, this storm was bad - six million people lost power during the course of the storm.