Wednesday 6 PM Tropical Update: Hurricane Francine back to Category 1

This again. We're looking at the West Bank right now and you can see the water on the camera very ominous looking cloud out there. Uh Chief meteorologist Chris Franklin has been giving us the latest forecast. He and Alexa Trisler, other meteorologist in house, uh with just some fantastic information as this storm has worked its way onto Louisiana's coast. Now, Chris, what are we looking at there? Yeah, I mean, this is uh one of the heavier bands of per se also kind of ba basically the kind of extreme outer eye wall of the storm, which is really expanded in size but is associated with some very intense rainfall. Uh Now we can update as of the six o'clock advisory. Uh It is back down to a category one with winds of 90 miles an hour, a forward motion though, has not changed still fairly decent clip, uh northeast at 17 miles an hour, but just looking at those low clouds, very intense rains. This is what we saw along the coastline and thankfully, it is moving very, very quickly and it is moving toward now, Metro New Orleans. Now we do have some intense rain over New Orleans, uh But even more so as you can kind of see from that camera there, uh fairly heavy on both sides of the river and down the Bayou Raceland, really getting in on some of the more intense rain to Thibodeaux Diss Allmans. Uh And so that is moving from Saint Charles Parish, that'll continue on into Jefferson and possibly continuing further into uh Metro New Orleans. So I was trying to um uh shrink the size of my uh my massive icon here. Uh Just to give a better idea, this is where the center of the storm is obviously. Uh But also to give you an idea of just how quickly that the storm has been moving. That's a little bit better. Um The, the center is still over Terrebonne Parish, so it is moving farther inland but still over very marshier areas south of highway 90. So if you're familiar with Terrebonne Parish, really anything south of 90 especially in the western part of the parish is very much marsh, but it also is a little bit closer to Morgan City and Morgan City again, not really reporting 4050 mile an hour winds sustained. So, uh we're just barely at those of a uh tropical storm, let alone even a category one hurricane. I think that wind field for the hurricane is incredibly small and in a very what really is happening right now, remote area. So you're really at the moment only gonna find some of the strongest winds out over the marshes south of 90 at the moment. Now, those intense rains that we saw from our tower camera, this is what we were looking at. We've already got some periods of very heavy rainfall moving through Metro New Orleans. These are kind of those uh not necessarily feeder bands per se because this is not really a typical structure of a tropical storm of a messy system and not as well organized or structured. It's not a symmetrical storm by any means, but this is certainly some of the heaviest of the rainfall. And this is what the models now, not all of the models are perfect, but the GFS and the Euro, once they started to really come into agreement, basically, had this system nailed and it really did indicate I wanna kind of, uh widen out with, um, all of our radars that we have kind of a uh a network of radars across the Gulf south from Houston, uh up toward Jackson Hammond. Uh when you look at the radar now, this can see pretty far out into the Gulf, you can see from kind of the a little band of showers down here. These are the intense rains, where are they? Northern and western side? Eastern southeastern especially and southern side is almost not entirely but more rain free. So as these storms continue northward, I think we're going to start to see improving conditions almost immediately. So these are the worst of the rain. So more of the northeastern quadrant, northern section and then northwestern and western. So kind of breaking it up like a compass. It's more of the eastern southeastern, southern southwester that really is very much rain, not completely but more so rain free. So once this storm continues along its path northward, these intense rains will also continue moving northward and it doesn't appear as though we really have any at least intense storms farther south. Now, it is still drawing moisture out of the Gulf of Mexico. So I'm not gonna say it's completely clear and we're done with the rainfall, but at least in terms of the intense rains, I think this is primarily what we are looking at and that is what the models were saying over the last couple of days. And in fact, kind of what they have continued to say, we can kind of uh let me zip back over to our uh GFS in Europe as to what the storm is doing right now. You can see where the rainfall is, where the storm center is. And I'm selecting the uh GFS here. And that's again, basically what it's indicating kind of the northeastern northern northwestern and western sectors of the storm. That's where we find the heads with the heaviest of the rainfall. And then what you see in kind of the lighter greens are more of those light, moderate showers, more spotty in nature and not the intense storms that will likely kind of focus more on the north storm. So maybe it's six o'clock right now. Next four hours, we should see a lot of that shifting more north of the lake. Now, the rainfall rates are extensive. So we will pick up in those four hours, probably several inches of rainfall that is going to lead to some flash flooding concerns and hopefully not too widespread. But that will lead to those concerns more of an issue later into the night for the North Shore, as well as further along the Florida parishes. Then as we approach midnight, 1:02 a.m. that focus is then lifted and much, much weaker into Southwester Mississippi. So that's why, ok, the causeway bridge was just closed. Uh Certainly as the storm is nearing the uh metropolitan New Orleans area toward the river Parishes, this was not admitted the time to try and hit any of the bridges, especially the causeway as we were talking earlier, uh with winds with regard to winds. Uh when you have wind, moving over land, the land interaction with wind, it's creates friction and they slow down over the water. They tend to be much, much stronger, that includes Lake Pontchartrain with those strong easterly winds. So some of our wind observations that we have had on land are definitely much lighter than what you would see over the lake. And I think that is why they have now closed the causeway so that just coming in breaking, uh that the causeway bridge is closed. Obviously, at this point in the evening would not have recommended doing that. But going back to the rainfall kind of structure that we've been looking at. It does here as though both the Euro and the GFS pretty much hammered that almost perfectly. One of the big reasons for that is we've got dry air, incredibly dry over Texas, but that has been able to kind of feed in on the southern and eastern side of the storm as that occurs. It evaporates a lot of that heavier rainfall, which is why we're not seeing it again, completely dry, but certainly more of a lack of rain and a break in the rain and maybe kind of an end to the rain as we go later into the night and into early tomorrow, that drier air really takes over and we see a far more significant uh uh drying trend as we continue on through the night and into uh early Thursday morning. That's what we've said by early Thursday morning, conditions will be improving. Not that we are recommending you by any means to then start going out. And uh you, you know, seeing what there is to be seen, uh just give officials some time to go out and make the assessments, make sure everything is clear. Roadways are clear. Power lines are not uh energized and lying over the roads that those can all be cleared away. And hopefully, as we've kind of seen a lot of those higher wind, uh, estimates for the wind speeds and wind gusts have not really materialized. Thus far, they have been far less than some of the higher totals that the computer models were indicating. Uh, a moment ago. I got so many graphics here on my, my show. It's hard to find everything I wanted to kind of just so I'm jumping around here. Uh, these are what the winds are doing right now. They have increased 30 plus miles an hour around the city and we are getting wind gusts up to over 50 miles an hour. So that's at that as that band is kind of moving a little bit closer to the metro area. So expect the winds to continue increasing sustained and gust over the course. So the next several hours, but as we were looking at it may be roughly a four hour window before those more intense storms are then moving on to the North shore. More of an issue for the folks north of the lake a little bit later in the night tonight and then clearing us out into Southwester Mississippi after probably about one AMI would say at the kind of a, a rough estimate as to when those storms would probably more cleared of the north shore after midnight, more toward, uh, 1 a.m. So, uh, where we would really like to see some observations are down, not really reporting any date at the moment. HOA Galliano and Port Fusion where we're getting in on some of those heaviest, uh, uh, strongest of the winds also going back to our buoys if, uh, my remote will let me, uh, here we go and let's see if it'll display, I don't wanna go that far. Let's see if it'll go back to the Bowie. Ok. You know, Morgan City, not too far away from the center of the storm. 52 mile an hour winds there. Uh, you know, you're within the low end range of a tropical storm, 34 mile an hour winds were not quite to tropical storm or even depression in the city. So the wind field for not only the hurricane force but even the tropical storm force winds are rather small. Now, with that being said it does happen at times with these storms moving inland and with that dry air interaction, we can see that stronger wind field spread out a bit before it begins to weaken. But I think what we're going to see as it expands and then thus, uh, then starts to weaken is not what the computer models have been indicating of 80 mile an hour wind gusts. We have not seen that yet and I don't think we're gonna see anything close to that. That would have been on the really high end range of some of the, uh, the worst case scenario models. And I don't think that's going to happen. As I said, when the storms are moving inland, we're going more into, uh, observations and near term forecast as opposed to the long term, trying to figure out what these storms are going to do and what they're going to do in the long range. We don't have to worry about that is in the long range. The storm will be well to our north and we will be done with it. So, switching back over to uh weather stations and the radar itself again, the winds at Morgan City out of the north, 44 miles an hour, they're out of the northeast at New Orleans at uh 32 miles an hour. So it does look like the storm may be trying to make a little bit more of a jog closer toward the city just based upon what the winds are doing here. Uh This would be more indicative of what would happen in the uh northeastern, uh excuse me, northwestern or western part of the storm itself. So with those winds kind of favoring a little bit more of a northeastern direction, it may be that the storm is going to push a little bit closer to Metro New Orleans. And we've already seen that trend with some of the heaviest of the rain bands moving in the direction of Metro New Orleans already getting in on some of the heaviest of the rainfall and note, we've got quite a break where we do currently have uh, two active flash flood warnings while still intense from Thibodeaux to Ra and cut off anywhere south toward home. And Chauvin, you've got a bit of a break. Now on the southern end of the eye wall and the western side, southwester side, the rainfall has it been nearly as intense as kind of the northeastern part of the storm. So this is, uh probably by and far the most intense part of the storm racing across the Bayou Parishes, moving toward the river Parishes. And I think somewhat we'll be clipping Metro New Orleans. All right. Thank you so much, Chris.