Francine dumps heavy rain on Louisiana Gulf Coast | LiveNOW from FOX

New Orleans. and this is from Chris Welty. Actually he's showing us some of what residents in Louisiana are seeing as the storm system. moves through the state, Looks like this is in front of the dominoes and and uh, the Water there. and, and uh, the Water there is quite the sight to see, I'd be curious to know exactly where this video was taken. Let's take a look at our xrad weather monitoring system. You see, of course, it made landfall in Southern, Louisiana Earlier this afternoon, and now it's making its way inching further. And further up north, I do want to check in with Fox's Caroline Shively, who is on the ground and Caroline, Uh, we appreciate you joining us. Uh, I hope you're staying safe out there. Firstly, uh, tell us. what it feels like at this point tonight. Hi there Austin. Yeah, things are definitely We saw. earlier in the afternoon. uh, this has been 1, tough storm to track at first sometime this afternoon, we thought we'd ride this sucker out as a category 1, then, boom, Right before it made landfall. in tabone Parish early this evening. uh it turned into a cat 2 really popping up having that strength. Of course now went down to category 1 1 and then a tropical storm. and it jogged East which we weren't expecting So here in Baton Rouge. uh, what we were really worried about is flooding and we have seen some of that absolutely, But we're standing next to the Mississippi River it has a very high levy on the outside on the back side of that there are a lot of plants gas chemical plastic. Uh, so far they look pretty safe the Mississippi is high. uh, but not over topping that Levy. So here in Baton Rouge, much better than it could have been, but we are expect Contacting things to change overnight. power Outages are going to go up. 3 7 4, 4, can get a wider shot of this parking lot where I am now, Austin, almost. 100 power trucks are here. They are from Alabama. Indiana. West Virginia, Texas, All over the country. They are staged right here tonight. once the Sun is up and once the winds dip down below, a steady, 30 miles per hour, they can get up in those buckets and start fixing some of those folks who are out of power when it comes down to people, probably more than a million folks or without power tonight. in Louisiana Caroline has the power. been steady where you're at? Have you lost power at any point tonight so far We have not, uh, we are in a large hotel with all the linemen who are working this truck. So we feel pretty good about it but no, we haven't even had a flicker. I have seen 1 line down. uh, between us and the Mississippi River, uh, but Power here in Baton Rouge is holding pretty steady. and I got to say communities like this. there are no strangers to these types of storms, correct or they used to this type of thing. Absolutely. There are no rookies down here in Baton Rouge and anywhere in Southeastern Louisiana, They know what to expect. They know what, uh, what to do. yesterday when we arrived in New Orleans, No, 1 was panicking. People were going out. They were getting their supplies. We know, went up to Zachary Louisiana about 25 minutes. Uh, north of here, more of the same. Uh, they were Prepared of course, at 2016 if you remember that that was a terrible flood. It wasn't associated with a hurricane. It was just a really heavy downpour 20 inches of rain in a very short period of time. they saw massive flooding in this low-lying area, the governor's mansion. even the basement flooded. Uh, so they definitely took precautions since then. uh Public schools are closed here. This is a big government town. Non-essential workers were told to stay home. uh, LSU. they had virtual classes today, so they're being smart about it. they're not being crazy about it 1 interesting thing, though, uh, we're by a bridge right across the Mississippi River. They were saying stay off the roads. It's dark. You can't see It's out of your line of sight, but I can still see big trucks semis. coming over that bridge and that's what they've been advising against. But overall we're seeing people being smart. hunkering down. waiting to see what we can see. once day breaks. I know you said those power trucks are not moving. They're going to be staying put until the morning. they have it mobilized quite yet. But do you know, once the time comes are they prepared? To go all throughout the state. Are they perhaps even preparing to go farther up north? into States, like Mississippi? These guys are staging here. they're probably most mostly stay in the Baton Rouge area, New Orleans, got hit harder than, uh, than we thought that they would. So they're probably going up in that area. but you're absolutely right. This is tracking North slower than we thought it would. uh, but it's affecting Northern parts of Louisiana going into Mississippi by Friday. They're going to be feeling it. the Memphis area, so they have other trucks, staged a little farther north of here. If they will be going into those areas because you're going to start seeing those power outages Pop, I think maybe even throughout the day tomorrow too, because they are. So inundated with water in this area, The ground is really spongy. They've had about a week of really hard rain. So once those big trees start to fall, I think even more power outages. All right, we hope