Coastal flooding as Gulf storm forms | Forecasting With Friends

Will change over time when the weather is fine. Welcome to it. It's a tropical Monday. Bring it. Let's see what we get, man. I tell you, Mike, last night I'm here 4 p.m. that you know, and I knew that there was going to be a chance that they might name this at 4 p.m. yesterday, and they didn't. It was potential tropical Cyclone six, which was also expected possible. But man, when that first cone comes out and Houston is in it, I mean that just just even though, you know, it was going to be close, it's jarring and we are sitting a little more comfortable. I would say here in Houston on Monday morning, but I really want that closed circulation. Here's what I want, Mike. I want that closed circulation. And then I want 48 hours worth of computer data. Yes. And then we'll work with it. But unfortunately, we only have 36 hours before we have to do something. Right. It's like, you know, you can't trust the models that much when this thing is still ramping up and all that. But you know, we hope for, you know, our own selfish reasons, right? Right. That it doesn't come here but or that it doesn't intensify that much. But it definitely might. So we wanted to get you up to date. If you're just joining us, we now have Francine. So Francine is a tropical storm right now in the Gulf of Mexico. And this is the advisory that was just released an hour ago from the National Hurricane Center. Francine winds of about 50mph. And it's not moving that much. So which which also makes it harder for the computer model forecast. It's only moving at five miles an hour off toward the north northwest. And like JT mentioned, we're not in that cone anymore. And the center of the cone is pointed over there at Vermilion Bay, Louisiana. Lafayette, Louisiana. And those spots, which is a little bit healthy for our drive east of here, but we're probably still going to feel some effects. In fact, we were just looking it up. We are under a coastal flood warning. Yeah. And what I also think it's worth pointing out is that you mentioned right now that forward speed is around five miles an hour, but it is going to accelerate quickly as it starts to dash to the northeast. It hasn't made that northeast track yet, but high pressure over in the very eastern side of the Gulf of Mexico is really going to start pulling and dragging that over to the north northeast. And that is going to be what really makes a difference as far as where this track goes. It's our friend right now. That high pressure over near Florida. You know Alex Supko. Oh yeah. He's our assignment desk guru. He's a guru. He's the assignments desk guru in the morning and he heard me say something to this and he said that's got to be for, for forecasting with friends or as we call it for today. And it had to do with the cone of uncertainty versus the area of influence. Sure Which can obviously be a lot different. So that's why I wanted to show you that areas outside the cone are still going to be affected, like South Texas has flood watches in effect right now. So heavy rain and flooding, even though they're way outside of the cone and we could have some heavy rain along our coastline and some coastal flooding even though we're outside the cone. And then the same thing on the right, side of the cone. Now I did find the text here for that. Locally here, like Galveston, let's see the Brazoria County, Galveston Island and Bolivar Peninsula are under a coastal flood warning. And let's see, I'm just I'm reading this for the first time. So they say high rip current risk. Oh, sure. You should not be swimming in there. No no no no, this is not the time to rush out into the waters off of Galveston. No. So the coastal flood warning is in effect from 10 p.m. this evening until 1 p.m. Wednesday. And in addition to the rip current risk, they're saying significant coastal flooding is expected. Gulf facing beaches, including Matagorda Peninsula, Galveston County beaches, Galveston Islan, Bolivar Peninsula, and let me see that. They're talking about 1 to 3 foot storm surge, which, you know, that's an impact. It's an impact, especially if you have big waves, you know, on top of that. So roads could get covered. Some of those really low lying roads, like West End of Galveston Island, Bolivar and those areas, beach erosion, all that kind of stuff. So that is in effect for us right now. This let me see if this is a new run. So I have a couple of, of runs that I put in here of the GFS. So this may be the new one. And it shows the center, you know. Well, to our south, but there's Wednesday morning and then staying off to our east and pretty much that looks like right along the hurricane center path. And then the euro I think is also kind of doing the same thing. You know, we like to see that they're lined up. You know, the euro is actually a little closer, it looks like. But they're pretty much lined up together, you know, showing it, staying off to our east. And you know, when you say closer, you mean closer to Houston or closer to the forecast track. The euro looks like it's a little closer to us to Houston. Okay. Yeah I want to make sure I knew we were close, a little closer to us, but either way, it wouldn't be surprising if the sun was out. Oh, right. You know, on Wednesday, in some spots. Yeah. No, our storm alert day for, for Wednesday might not pan out. I mean, we're going to be real honest. What I really appreciate is, you know, in nowadays, when we get these updates from the, especially our local office here, they put a confidence bar down at the bottom. I noticed that lately we should do that. Yeah. They have a confidence bar that they put down at the bottom on. Very confident or not. So confident. And we've been all of us have been over here in the not so confident range for a while because we're just the uncertainties with the tropical system developing this quickly in the Gulf and the land interaction, the dry air, those are the two things that really are going to hinder the development of this system. Yeah, I have that because you were talking about before. So I pulled this up. This one. Yeah. About the dry air thing. So you can see clearly that dry air that's in the upper levels of the atmosphere and that's been tied to that front that moved through on Friday and then stalled out right off of our coast. Man. That's what brought us the amazingly pleasant September weather to begin our weekend or have the whole weekend. But we will see that tropical system interact a little bit, at least a little bit with that. But if it can stay out in the Gulf away from the dry air, then that's going to feed the fuel, you know, put more fuel to this fire and it's going to grow. If I'm in Lafayette, right now, I'm I'm getting ready for a category two hurricane. I mean, if that I mean, I'm not saying it's for sure going to be a category two, but I know plan for it. I'm going to plan for hurricane two if I'm sitting over in Lafayette right now. And also I'm wondering, how did I get in Lafayette, Louisiana? You were hungry. I know I got I'm not going to talk bad about Louisiana right now for some crawfish. Yeah. We used to go back there all the time, but now that Crystal's whole family is here, right rare we go back usually once a year for Mardi Gras. Yes, and that's it. But they, you know, the Louisiana. It's a magnet for tropical activity, a tropical magnet. It definitely is. And so it's really warm out there. I mean, it's cooking over some super warm waters. And by the way, we also do have some a couple of storms, whoops I skipped I double clicked the button. There's a lot more tropical wave activity out there now. And there's a couple of those that have. Let's see. The hurricane center I think has a 70% on one and a 60% on the other for development here over the next, seven days or so. I want to as we take a look at this, I want to read you because those of you who tune in for forecasting with friends are real weather wizards. Wizards? Yes. Real weather gurus, real weather gurus and aficionado. So I do have a strong interest, a very strong interest. So I have the discussion from the National Hurricane Center. So I'd like to read you that because it's a very technical kind of discussion. All right. I'm ready. So the structure of the system on satellite imagery has improved this morning with large circular region of cold convection between -70 and -85 degrees. That is very, very tall cloud. That's not real tropical as far as the storms are concerned. I mean it's I unless it's like making it up to like right where the stratosphere is. An Air Force Reserve reconnaissance aircraft is sampling the system this morning, earlier found a cyclonic wind shift from southeasterly to northwesterly. That's probably why they upgraded it to Tropical Storm. They found a closed circulation. A fancy way of saying that, so thus get to use thus, the PTC six has become Tropical Storm Francine. The estimated motion is still tricky. We don't like that. Tricky, tricky, tricky. We don't like tricky, given the center only recently formed. But the estimated motion is still to the north northwest at four knots. The system is expected to gradually turn northward and then north northeastward as it moves between a mid-level ridge. JD mentioned that area of high pressure, centered over Cuba and then a broad mid to upper level. And we saw that with the dry air trough, located to the northwest and northwest Texas, the guidance this cycle has shifted a little eastward away from us and has sped up. So a little bit faster. The NHC NHC track forecast was once again nudged in that direction away from us. So that's good, the system is now a tropical storm. The inner core wind field per reconnaissance observations, is still broad, and in the organizing stage, meaning it's going to get stronger, and then it goes la de da with a bunch of other stuff and basically says that the consensus of the models they have show that, it's going to hit a 75 knot peak in 48 hours. So that's category one status, the key messages, this is what you need to take home. This is the this is the more of the English. Yeah. This is version okay. Yeah. Francine is forecast to become a hurricane when it reaches the northwestern Gulf Coast on Wednesday or Wednesday night. There's an increasing likelihood of life threatening storm surge inundation in portions of the upper Texas coast. The barely, barely. And Louisiana coastlines where storm surge watch is in effect. That's that's more for the Port Arthur area. Yeah. Residents in the watch area should follow advice given by local officials. Okay. Number two, there's an increasing risk of damaging hurricane force winds in the portions of Southeast southern Louisiana beginning on Monday, where Hurricane Watch is now in effect. And then finally, number three, Francine is expected to bring heavy rainfall in the risk of considerable flash flooding along the coast of Far northeast Mexico. Portions of southernmost Texas coastline, the upper Texas coast, southern Louisiana, and southern Mississippi through Thursday morning. And that's when you're talking about impacts outside the cone, right? That's the that's outside the cone. Because none of the Texas mentioned is in the cone. But the impacts are and, you know, at the beginning of the hurricane season, the hurricane center was talking about updating their cone. Yeah. It's like I don't think they did. They did an experiment on it with, not Ernesto. No, no, no, you're right. They haven't used it yet. They had said we'll do it at the end of August. Right. And then we went to a drought. Yeah So on a previous episode of forecasting with friends, Allison was talking about it. And she pulled up a an example graphic because I think we had gotten to they were going to start using it in the middle of August at some point. Yeah. And whatever date it was, we hit that date. And I think they put a graphic on their web page. And Allison pulled it up and said, okay, this is what you're going to see, which is pretty much that instead of just seeing these, this line along the coast where where you have a hurricane warning or something, it's within the cone, you're going to see all the warnings that are inland, follow along the path of like inland hurricane warnings and things. And you just anything government related you can't change quickly. It takes a while. And so that's what's happening here with NOAA is tha, you know, the hurricane center is wanting to make changes. They realize that they should they need to. It's just a slow process. And it takes a minute to kind of move towards. So it looks like I'm trying to see where they have defined the watch, the sea. It's like, oh, that's kind of close by. Look on the public advisory, they usually list, where that starts and stops. Okay. Well let's because I want to let you guys know, get down below the summary. They'll list the watches. Okay. Yeah. Okay, so we have a storm surge watch from high Island eastward all the way over to the Mississippi Alabama border. So that's right where the Bolivar Peninsula kind of meets the mainland there of. Yeah. High island. Yeah. High Island and then let me see, yea. So this does it does not include technically our area, but the high island area over to port Arthur and then over to Louisiana. That's where the tropical storm watch is in effect. And then there's a part that's under the hurricane watch. So technically, nothing in our area is under a tropical watch per se. But we do have that coastal flood warning that's in effect 10 p.m. tonight through midday tomorrow. I'm sorry, 10 p.m. Wait, hold on a second. Let me let me read that. It does go into effect tonight I think. Yeah. Yeah. No, our our coastal flood watch through midday on Wednesday. Yeah. Yeah Bradley's telling us we have to go to break. We got to look at this video first. We have to we have to look at this. We have to look at this video. It's impressive. It happened over the weekend. This is very much Louisiana hurricane related. This is Lake Charles. That's the tallest building in Lake Charles. Well, it was the tallest building in Lake Charles. That's a planned implosion. Yes. That in 2020, the most active hurricane season on record, we saw five tropical systems hit Louisiana, two of them having impacts on Lake Charles. Laura, Hurricane Laura made that building inhabitable or unusable. And again, for four years. Basically, it's been sitting there and, that's a skyscraper if you're in lake. That's Lake Charles skyscraper. Yeah. That's what they call it, and yeah, that one went down. The Hertz Tower was the name of it. I was looking for that 22 story building imploded on Saturday after the break, we're going to have an extended version of the hurricane gear test slash Sullivan Smartsense that Heather and I did and was airing this morning. We have an extended version that we'll take a look at after this break. All the time when the Missing. Pleap the phone and call the police. Remember, you can remain anonymous. The Fox 26 YouTube page like and subscribe today. Change all the time when the y. I also did for comparison to help you is estimating for a family of four. I started with three days. I went shopping at Walmart and I used a list from Real Simple magazine of some of the essentials for first non-perishables. Let me show you. I spent about $57, and then I'm going to show you in just a second, some perishables. But they last a few days. They'll last sitting out in the heat. So overall, I spent about $75 to get you through the first three days. Family of four. Let me show you a little bit of what I've got. Of course I've got the canned goods. You're going to look for, you know, canned fruits and vegetables. Your soups, your beans. Be sure you're getting some canned meats that gives you that protein. But great, great prices there. And don't forget the can opener. Of course, you know, they talked about trail mix, but you can also get some raisins and some nuts and make some trail mix for even a lot less crackers, peanut butter, granola bars, all those things to kind of help sustain the family. If you have a heat source and you're able to do a little cooking, you know, maybe some spaghetti, some pasta and some pasta sauce, very, very cheap. And then let's talk about these are perishables, but they last if they need to sit out. So you're thinking about some produce to get you through some apples, oranges, cucumber, tomato, potato, avocado those things, if they're not refrigerated, you're okay for a few days, it's going to be fine. And some some bread. Yeah. And I'm glad you specifically said that word refrigerated because that's what you need to focus on this this area, this pile, these nonperishable or these perishable items, this is right before the storm hits. Yes, but maybe not needing electricity for them. And then over here, the perishable items, it doesn't even have to be a full year or two. Like what a canned good would be. You're just needing really. Six months is what you need to shop for. So a box of crackers that's going to sit around for six months while peanut butter lasts almost forever. But there's other things out there like, I think of goldfish crackers or fruit snacks. There's other things out there that maybe don't have a two year shelf life, but they can hang around for six months. And then we talked about this earlier, that you can eat these things after the season is over. Right. It's not going to be a wasted expense. Yeah. And I think the tip to again is you're going to need to buy, you know, some new supplies as we move into the next hurricane season. But you know, make the list and then you just buy a few items each week. And that way you're not, like, really adding on to your budget. All of a sudden you're just adding a few more items each week and kind of checking things off the list. And I wanted to kind of move on a little bit here to the water or just or point out a thing about the water. I mentioned that you need three days worth of food and water. Okay. The recommendations are one one gallon per person per day. So in other words, you're going to need three of these at a minimum for one person. And so the water really does add up. And it really takes some thinking about how am I going to store it. And you know, where am I going to, you know, have this many. And usually this is something as well that you should start buying several at a time earlier in the year because, you don't want to go to the store and buy like six of these at one time if you can help it. And you know what I found interesting was it was kind of a break even whether you're going to do it by the gallon and use your, you know, glasses at home for drinking or if you prefer, buying the bottled water, whether you get like a case of 40 of these or gallons, you know, if you're buying the same amount of water, it's actually a wash when it comes to the cost. Okay, that's good, that's good. Good to know. Good information there for sure. All right. Let's talk about the lighting for just a minute. And this is a fantastic find that you had here. I'm just going to go ahead and open this up because I want to point out a couple things. First of all this is a box of flashlights. And it's got a lantern in there. And what's really important to note is that you've got the batteries that are already in here. Yes. They're not in the flashlight, but they are of here and available. And I always tell people just to store it just like this. Don't take the flashlights out of the box. Don't take them out of the packaging and put them in. Just leave them just like this. This way it's going to store a lot better for a long time, and it's not a bad idea to maybe have one. I noticed, Heather, you had one of them. Yeah, but you find you really don't need all that much light. I picked this up though, at Walmart, $12 for the kit. So it was, what, five different lights, right? Or six different lights? Oh, yeah. The headlamp. Yeah. These things, you can just sit out on a counter very handy. And that way it just kind of lights up the room, you know. Sure yeah. So great. Great little find like that. Very inexpensive. Comes with the batteries. You know, maybe, maybe check it after a few years. But very, very handy. And that's the key, you know, maybe have an extra set of batteries if you want these. And these all run on the same type of battery, which is super convenient. It's all triple A, triple A, so you can buy another package of triple A, and you're kind of set to go. I talked about power needs. Everybody Maybe somebody has to have medications that are refrigerated where your power needs are going to be a lot more than some people, but at the minimum, every