Hurricane Francine’s coastal hazards

know. Thank you for that. Heather. Francine is expected to produce multiple hazards into portions of Texas and Louisiana coastline. And today, Allison is chatting with the National Hurricane Center as the latest advisory updates. Yeah, so we just got that intermediate advisory at 7:00 this morning. But you can see those outer rain bands already starting to make their way into coastal Louisiana. But we do have an interview with the director of the National Hurricane Center, Mister Michael Brennan. Thank you so much for joining us. This morning. Now we live in Southeast Texas. Obviously, we've pretty much been spared. There's you know, minor impacts for us, but can we talk about those coastal impacts for folks who live in Louisiana? Yeah, we're going to see multiple life threatening hazards playing out over the next 12 to 24 hours. For much of southern and southeastern Louisiana. You can already see the heavy rainfall moving on shore here into the southern coast of Louisiana. You can see the eye of Francine here in the radar imagery. We're really going to see those. You know, the storm surge is one of our biggest concerns here from Intracoastal City over to Port Fourchon, expecting somewhere in this region to get 5 to 10ft of inundation above ground level. As the center of Francine makes landfall along the coast here late this afternoon or this evening, and then the potential for significant storm surge elsewhere, all the way over to the Mississippi coast on the north side of Lake Pontchartrain. And then we have the potential for pretty significant hurricane force winds with hurricane warnings in effect for places like Baton Rouge and Houma. Hurricane watches and tropical storm warnings for metro New Orleans. You can see the extent of these tropical storm warnings in blue all the way across much of southern Louisiana, even into southern and southwestern portions of Mississippi. There's going to be the heavy rainfall threat as well, potential for up to a foot of rain in some isolated locations. Here, near where the core of Francine makes landfall later today. And then. So I want to talk about the strengthening of this storm, because it strengthened pretty quickly in the Gulf. And we're likely going to be seeing it make landfall as what, category two hurricane. It's going to be close, you know, again, it could be category one. Category two. We're starting to see those stronger upper level winds start to affect Francine. Now you can see the cloud shield being pushed out well in advance of the center. We haven't seen a lot of strengthening in the last few 2 or 3 hours from the aircraft data that's been in there certainly could get up to category two. Whether it's a category two or category one at this point almost doesn't make much difference. Those impacts are coming, and the center is going to be moving on shore in the next, you know, 12 hours or so. And then that heavy rain will continue inland, like you mentioned. Let's go through the winds because we're likely going to be seeing some pretty strong winds along the coast, but that's going to get drug inland as well. Yeah. With the fast forward motion of Francine now up to 12mph and expected to increase even further, that's going to carry those strong winds pretty far inland across portions of Louisiana as I mentioned, you know, hurricane warnings all the way up to Baton Rouge. We could see high end tropical storm force winds, even hurricane force wind gusts in the New Orleans metro area where we have that hurricane watch in effect. Then we're expecting to see tropical storm conditions all the way up into portions of southern Mississippi, even just to the south of Jackson, where we have tropical storm watches. In effect, could see trees, some tree damage, scattered power outages here, more widespread power outages near where the core of Francine makes landfall in coastal Louisiana. And then just one more question, Michael. So you know, yesterday officially was the peak of the hurricane season. And we're seeing things start to ramp up. So even though we're not going to be seeing much of the impact here in Southeast Texas, what do you want to tell folks like, hey, we still have several weeks and months left of the season. Yeah, most of the activity still to come in the hurricane season. It's kind of back loaded. We're watching 3 or 4 other areas out across the tropical Atlantic and off the southeast coast. No imminent threats for, say, the Texas coast at this point. But as we move later into the hurricane season, the location where storms form tends to shift back to the western part of the basin, the Caribbean, the Gulf near the US east coast. So that threat is going to continue all the way through the rest of September into October. And hurricane season runs all the way through the end of November. As you well know. So people don't want to let their guard down. Stay vigilant, keep checking, and we'll be watching things here at the Hurricane