12 AM Tropical Storm Francine to continue to weaken, Flash Flood Warning still in effect for Southsh

Rip the storm apart. That's what we wanna see. We wanna see this continue to weaken and even when I uh kind of enhanced our radar to see a little bit more of kind of the broad moisture, definitely that broad circulation, but this is now confined to more of the low level. It no longer has that ability to grow in the atmosphere. It no longer has that outlet for these storms to continue to intensify, so they will continue to weaken. Now, we do have the flood flash flood warning continuing on the South shore, but that is not because we are adding to the problem. It's just that it takes so long for all of that water to clear and this is more of a heads up. We don't want you trying to drive in this through the night tonight. And again, a lot of power outages in JP, you cannot see where the road ends and the canal begins. So just stay off the roads until tomorrow morning. And really until we kind of get the all clear radar estimates anywhere from over five to almost eight inches of rainfall. And I guarantee there are probably a few pockets of higher numbers than that. Thankfully, we really didn't see that continue on to the North shore as those storms were getting weakened and ripped apart, the rainfall rates were coming down, the rainfall totals were also not adding up to nearly what we saw on the South shore. And actually, as a matter of fact, let's take a look at the North shore numbers and get you kind of a radar estimate of what we have seen thus far north of the lake, really some pockets of some very heavy rainfall and may have had some areas of six plus inches of rainfall. So that is kind of surprising because we are not getting the reports of the flooding uh north of the lake. So, uh according to the reflectivity estimates, now again, this is the radar estimates. Uh we're looking at, you know, four plus to 6.5 inches of rainfall. So that almost coincides what we saw in the South Shore. But thus far we have not heard of. And actually, I've been uh chatting with a number of friends on the North Shore, none of them have reported any flooding. And as a matter of fact, they had the gusty winds and the rain, but that was about it. I'm sure there was some street flooding, no question about it, but certainly not the extent of which that we saw in Jefferson Parish. And also thankfully on the North shore, what had been under a flash flood warning. We are starting to see most of that rainfall and that includes from the Hammond area. So southern Tangier Parish across southern Saint Tammany Parish, a lot of that is starting to wind down. Still some areas heavy across northern Saint Tammany into Washington, also including uh Han uh kind of the extreme corner of Hancock County and then to Pearl River County with this ongoing moderate to heavy rainfall, flash flooding, likely street flooding, probably the greater concern. Again, both sides of the lake. This is not the time you want to be trying to drive around and assess the damage. And while we do appreciate the pictures, we'd rather you just stand out on your front porch on a videotape that take the picture and send it to us. Stay safe. Do not go wandering around some of the neighborhoods to try and get better pictures. We will see enough during the day tomorrow. 7.32. These are the official numbers 7.32 inches of rainfall at Canada. Now slidell reported almost four inches of rain and you can see from our contours. Kind of just below this. The contours are generated by the radar estimates. So clearly there are areas of likely higher amounts of rain in uh between a lot of these weather stations. So definitely a big rain maker and I will admit this always looked to this never appeared to be a big rain event as it looked like we were not going to see dramatic accumulation totals because we were expecting the storm would move very quickly. Something that we probably will need to look back on with future storms is the interaction with that dry air. But more so the wind shear while the storm was trying to move farther to the north and northeast very quickly, that wind shear almost in a sense, kind of slowed it down and started to spread that rainfall. That's kind of what helped to, to stall over the city and then slowly, painfully slow, move from the river parishes. We heard the parish presidents in uh Saint John how painfully slow it took for all of the Saint Charles, excuse me to uh move all of that rainfall out, including across the metro area. That again, rainfall totals rainfall rates. There is not a pumping station in the world that can handle that kind of water and get it out and off of the streets. Thankfully though, we are starting to see those totals come down and while there was some damage in a number of homes, it probably could have been a lot worse. Had the rain not ended when it did still getting the wind gusts. A lot of folks are, I think a little bit nervous with the trying to go to bed and hearing the winds. It it's gonna still be pretty blustery through the night tonight. Still gusting up to 41 miles an hour at Kenner gusting up to 55 at lakefront, sustained winds have been 23 to 35 and still not quite as strong on the north shore because again, these storms are weakening as they pushed into our north shore in Florida parishes. Now, as we go throughout the night, the again, what is now just basically low level circulation will be pushing farther north and now that those storm tops are gone, you're really hard pressed to find really strong winds associated with wood is almost not even a hurricane or not even a tropical system any longer. It has lost any upper level support and the models in decent agreement and, and, and fairly accurate with the uh presentation of where the heaviest of the rainfall was a little bit more removed to the northern and somewhat eastern side. But you also had some of that kind of building around on the western side as well. The dry air was kind of trying to push the moisture off to the east. Then the uh excuse me, the wind shear was trying to push all of that moisture off to the east. Then the drier air was trying to wrap it around to the west and it was kind of a battle to see which one of those would win out. Looks like maybe the wind shear went out more so than the dry air. But then the dry air started to kind of cut off that moisture and started to weaken the storms as they moved northward. Not only that the strong wind shear started to help we, in these storms as those taller cloud tops were just being ripped apart. So through the night, we will see improving conditions. Folks on the North shore asking, when are we gonna be done with the rainfall? Probably won't be until maybe after about 132 o'clock, we're here at midnight and there's still a rain around on the North Shore. So it's probably gonna be another couple of hours before all of that moisture is to your north and then steadily drying out through the night. As a matter of fact, speaking of the North shore, looking at all the rivers, we're expecting them to kind of rapidly rise through the overnight and most will start reaching moderate flood stages at some point early to mid tomorrow. Most of them will drop very quickly by Friday or Saturday. Back below flood stage. The Pearl River is gonna be a little bit slower. It's a larger river. So it's to be a little bit slower to kind of climb up the flood stage. It'll probably hang there through the weekend and then slowly start dropping through next week. So kind of what we're looking at on the North shore and the river forecasts are also tricky because it really depends upon which of the basins get the most rainfall through the night. Tonight. So some of those forecasts could dramatically change, hopefully for the better that we're not going to see them kind of spike during the day tomorrow at a moderate uh flood stage. Uh but hopefully maybe a little bit less than that, but weather service kind of put in there. The caveat that this forecast could dramatically change tomorrow. It'll just get to be seen how much rainfall we see across those uh those river basins during the course of the night tonight and into tomorrow. So that will affect the flooding along our north shore rivers. And again, the Pearl River is gonna take a little bit more time to rise the flood stage and a little bit longer to drop back below flood stage. So we're getting into the rainfall on the north shore at the moment, we've got the drying period on the south shore. Thank goodness, we have seen that break before some even or before even more of the homes and businesses around JP started to get the high water that thankfully started to heat. As a number of officials said just about before, we were at capacity of the streets. As Scott Walker was mentioning, the streets in Jefferson parish are kind of designed to flood and we do tend to see that anytime there are big downpours, JP streets do tend to flood and they kind of hold the water. And thankfully, it doesn't get into the homes on most occasions. And we were starting to get to that level before the rain finally started and water kind of held and then slowly has started to recede. So we are seeing some improvements. I know slow for many. They want to get that water out of here. You just need to give it a little bit more time, but conditions are improving across the south shore. And when you get these radar estimates of over 7 to 8 plus inches of rainfall, it is just gonna take a little bit more time as far as the North Shore goes. We are getting a little bit more of those breaks in the rainfall across mother much of Saint uh Southern Tang Parish and southern uh Saint Tammany Parish that goes into uh Hancock County and then for the uh northern part of Saint Tammany and in the Washington Parish, rainfall continues. But as I said, these are not the rainfall rates, these are not the intensities of what our storms were on the South Shore much earlier as we were looking at uh back on satellite, the storms or the uh the uh the tropical storm Francine itself is getting ripped apart that dry air wind here. We're kind of hoping maybe it would take over a little bit sooner than it did. Unfortunately, it didn't do it fast enough before we got those heavy rains. And so it really ended up being, and that's why these storms are so tricky with forecasts. What of the impacts will be the greatest? Is that all of the impacts? Is it one or two? We thankfully and Alexa Trisler was kind of looking at some of the gauges along our coast and lake. And thankfully, most of the gauges had been reporting uh not excessively high storm surge totals, I think while we will have had and did have certainly some storm surge. I don't think at least based on the preliminary data that is kind of reassessed a little bit later. Preliminary data, we don't really have the the real time storm surge, um, numbers that we do for other weather parameters. So it looks like as we later assess it, it wasn't possibly as bad as what we had thought it could be. So that is one good piece of information. It may be because Francine kind of struggled to really gain any strength. So before it was able to build up much of a surge at that point, it was already about to move inland. So it really didn't have much time to build up a huge surge. So thankfully, what we did see is about as bad as the surge will get. Now, it is still kind of piling up in a Lake Pontchartrain, but as the storm itself continues to weaken and those winds aren't nearly as strong. We should start overnight tonight if well, it's already after midnight. So through the early morning hours and continuing through our Thursday we should start to see that water receding and leaving the lake getting pushed away from our coastline. And thank goodness that wind shear, what had been there more intense thunderstorms over the South shore as they move north of the lake, the rainfall is still there, but those cloud tops are getting ripped apart. So that is what is doing, that is what is helping us out is that wind shear kind of ripping the storms apart. And that's why I'm saying, as you look into the mid and upper levels, what we're looking at with a satellite just does not have the characteristics or the signature of what you would look for. For a tropical system. That rotation is only down at the surface, which is why we could only really find it on radar. So it'll be interesting to see uh again as of nine o'clock or actually after eight. So the nine o'clock, we stopped getting hourly uh advisories from the National Hurricane Center. Uh They decided to go back to what they normally would issue. So the 10 p.m. we will get another advisory at 1 a.m. So in the next 50 minutes, we'll get a new plot of where the center of the storm is. New coordinates, new maximum sustained winds. Uh And then we're not gonna get out of the four, which at this point it's uh almost meaningless with the four o'clock advisory, we'll say with regards to a, a forecast and hopefully by 4 a.m. the center of, uh, what is kind of left over from Francine will already be well up to our north and moving further into southern Southwester and central Mississippi. So we will start to see and continue to see improving conditions across the area already. Getting a bit of a drier period around the South shore winds are still brisk. We'll look back at those winds right now. Let's take a look at the winds, uh, because a lot of folks are still asking, you know, thank goodness the rain is gone, but we're still getting these winds and yeah, I will say it, it, it's kind of scary when it, especially if you're in a dark home and it's, uh, kind of quiet and then you get these wind gusts of 40 to 50 miles an hour. Uh, they have been diminishing. It just takes some time. This is a lot of energy, even with a fairly unorganized and weaker hurricane. It is still a hurricane and you still get that fairly significant wind field with these storms. And so it does take some time for those, uh, stronger winds to begin to relax, to begin to wind down. They are certainly much lower than they were earlier in the evening, but they will take some time through the night to continue to diminish. Now at the moment, winds gusting to 40 to 50 miles an hour. Some of our strongest around the metro area. Doesn't look like we're gonna see winds gusting quite that strong north of the lake, but still at times, uh, pretty brisk. I mean, they're at 43 miles an hour right now. At Slidell, we'll see what happens as the storm center kind of pushes a little bit farther to the north. It will continue to bring those stronger winds farther north. But as of right now, it doesn't look like that will continue the strongest of the winds to move any farther, uh, north into Mississippi.