Eight years ago almost to the day, a Category 5 hurricane walked across Tyndall Air Force Base and tore the roofs off hangars with F-22 Raptors still inside. This week the Air Force is not waiting to find out whether history repeats.

Since Thursday, 8 October, stealth fighters, gunships, special-operations transports and test aircraft have been leaving Tyndall, Eglin and Hurlburt Field in the Florida Panhandle as Hurricane Isaias strengthens in the Gulf of Mexico. In Mississippi, the Air Force Reserve’s Hurricane Hunters have moved their whole fleet to Texas, and are flying back into the storm from there.

At 1 a.m. CDT on Friday, the National Hurricane Center put Isaias about 230 miles south of the mouth of the Mississippi River with maximum sustained winds near 105 mph, moving north-northeast at 14 mph. Landfall is expected within the hurricane warning area tonight or early Saturday.

Tyndall, Eglin and Hurlburt clear the ramps

Tyndall began moving aircraft on 8 October, including F-35s of the 325th Fighter Wing, a base spokesman told Air & Space Forces Magazine. Some were airborne that morning, but the spokesman called the situation “fluid,” and the wing would not say where the jets were going, citing operational security. The base moved to Hurricane Condition 2 the same day, meaning destructive winds of 58 mph or more were possible within 24 hours.

Eglin flew its airworthy aircraft from the 96th Test Wing, the 53rd Wing and the 33rd Fighter Wing to safe havens on Thursday. Air Force officials told Task & Purpose those included F-15s, F-16s and F-35s. Aircraft that could not fly were locked in hangars across the installation.

At Hurlburt Field, home of Air Force Special Operations Command, the 1st Special Operations Wing started flying out its AC-130 gunships and MC-130 special-operations transports. The wing’s public affairs chief told Task & Purpose they went to Little Rock Air Force Base in Arkansas, while aircraft in maintenance were moved into nearby hangars.

Evacuation orders for families

The people are leaving too. Keithley issued a limited evacuation order at 10:30 a.m. on Thursday for service members and civilian personnel living in Okaloosa County evacuation zones A and B, with travel allowances paid and no return until leadership says so. The base later updated the order to include Walton and Escambia counties.

Hurlburt’s wing commander ordered roughly 1,000 residents of privatised base housing and an RV site to leave by 5 p.m. on 8 October. The base does not expect surge to reach the houses themselves, but warned that rising water could swamp a critical station and cut wastewater, sewage and drinking water. Eglin’s hospital closed routine outpatient care, keeping the emergency room, labour and delivery and inpatient wards open.

Relocating the jets, Keithley said, “is a deliberate decision that reflects our responsibility to be good stewards of taxpayer resources while preserving our ability to execute the mission.”

ABC News on the Gulf Coast preparing for Hurricane Isaias’ landfall.

The Hurricane Hunters leave, and keep flying

The most counter-intuitive evacuation is at Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, on the Mississippi coast. The Air Force Reserve’s 403rd Wing moved the aircraft of both its flying squadrons, the 815th Airlift Squadron and the 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron, to Joint Base San Antonio, Texas, on 8 October.

The 53rd, the Hurricane Hunters, are not standing down. Their C-130-based WC-130Js keep flying reconnaissance missions into Isaias from Kelly Field in San Antonio, feeding the National Hurricane Center. Its 1 a.m. advisory on Friday opened with the line that both NOAA and Air Force Hurricane Hunters were flying inside the storm.

Fish also made the point that a quiet season proves nothing. The wing notes that El Niño conditions have made the 2026 Atlantic season slower than normal, but, as he put it, “a quieter season does not mean a risk-free season.”

The ghost of Hurricane Michael

Every one of these decisions is shaped by 10 October 2018. Hurricane Michael came ashore at Mexico Beach, just east of Tyndall, at Category 5 strength. The Air Force described the damage to the base as catastrophic and declared its facilities unlivable.

Tyndall then hosted 55 F-22 Raptors. Most flew out ahead of the storm, many of them to Wright-Patterson in Ohio. Seventeen could not: they were in planned maintenance or could not be launched at short notice, so they were sheltered in hangars that the storm then ripped open.

Early reporting feared some were beyond repair. In the end the Air Force said none had been destroyed. Lockheed Martin’s field teams changed canopies, swapped panels and patched coatings, and all 17 were flown out to other bases. The Raptors never came back: the squadrons went first to Eglin and then to Joint Base Langley-Eustis in Virginia, and Tyndall was rebuilt as an F-35A base.

That is the lesson behind this week’s ramps full of departing jets. Any aircraft that can fly leaves early. The ones that cannot, because they are opened up for maintenance, go into the strongest hangar available and take their chances.

Isaias is not forecast to be another Michael. But nobody at Tyndall is betting the jets on it.

Sources: National Hurricane Center, Hurricane Isaias Intermediate Advisory 10A and Discussion 10, 8-9 October 2026; Air & Space Forces Magazine (Stephen Losey), 8 October 2026; Task & Purpose (Patty Nieberg), 8 October 2026; WJHG, 7 and 8 October 2026; Eglin Air Force Base news releases; 403rd Wing / DVIDS, 8 October 2026; Lockheed Martin, “Tyndall’s Raptors Ride Out Hurricane Michael” (2019); TWZ on the Tyndall F-22s (2018); Wikipedia, Tyndall Air Force Base; NASA Earth Observatory.