Impacts from tropical system expected this week

Welcome back 514 here as we continue to watch our developing system in the Gulf of Mexico organized. It's not doing anything very quickly this morning, but into tomorrow, we are expecting it to continue to strengthen. And then eventually we have a hurricane making landfall in South Louisiana by late Wednesday. So here's what the next three days look like before we get to the track here. If you do need to make plans today is not gonna be too bad. Just a couple of showers this morning is beautiful. Tomorrow, we are gonna start to see more showers around and then the biggest impacts will be felt later Wednesday into Wednesday night. So that'll be the worst of this. Moving into South Louisiana. Here's the official 4 a.m. track. It has nudged to the east more closer to Lafayette and now parts of Southeast Louisiana in the track, you can see the center of it takes it up right through Lafayette by Wednesday evening, making landfall as a hurricane right now. Category one, we always say prepare for one category higher though and then moving inland on Thursday. So the official track right now extending from Lake Charles to New Orleans, but the trend has been for closer to Lafayette and some even more into Saint Mary and Trebon Parish. So we're gonna watch that trend very, very closely. Luckily, this is not a stalling storm. It's gonna continue to move out of the region. So the flooding risk should be mitigated, not giant rain totals but certainly some heavy rain in the forecast with this one. Now, we'll caution you, this track is not locked in and the reason for that, we don't have a named storm yet. Hurricane hunters were just out there. They can't find a well defined center just yet. So models are still guessing, but we do think it's coming together right in here where we're seeing the big burst of storms this morning and it's not gonna move that fast today and tomorrow, it's gonna be hanging out down here in the, just off the Texas coast. It's not really until Wednesday that it gets a kick from an incoming little trough of low pressure and that pulls it up into the region. You could see your models there split between Lake Charles and Lafayette and we've had a few high resolution models trending more so in the Saint Mary and Terre Bone. So watching that very, very closely. But anyway, you slice it, it puts us on the east side of a land falling hurricane by Wednesday. So once again, today and tomorrow not doing anything very quickly. It's hanging out down here, but then watch tomorrow, it really starts to organize and then this is when we have it as a hurricane moving up towards the Louisiana coast. Here we are Wednesday at 7 p.m. or so about to make landfall. This specific model has it making landfall around Vermilion Bay, Marsh Island and then putting on Lafayette Baton Rouge and New Orleans in the surrounding hurricane or tropical storm as it moves inland. And then once we get into Thursday morning, it's moving out and taking the rain with it. So with the track, the closer that core gets to us, the stronger the winds will be. And if that hurricane comes on shore, let's say near Vermilion Bay or Saint Mary Parish, we will see some significant winds down here, especially in our Bayou parish as winds could gust 90 to 100 miles an hour. Now, the closer you get to New Orleans and the north shore, probably 50 to 60 mile per hour wind gusts into Wednesday night and then things finally taper off as we head into Thursday morning. Rainfall totals are not off the charts here, but we will likely see some heavier rain near the core of that storm. Right. Now. The highest totals are closer to Baton Rouge and Morgan City in Lafayette. Our area on average 2 to 4 inches with occasionally and uh 1 to uh 3 to 6 inches. So our rainfall doesn't look like a major issue but certainly something to watch. Now, storm surge, obviously on the east side of the storm where water is pushing inland in our base here, we could see some inundation up to 7 ft or so. The further east you go less and less storm surge, but all of our tides will be running higher than normal, especially into Wednesday and even into early Thursday. So we are getting ready for this a landfall hurricane in South Louisiana currently centered around Lafayette, Marsh Island, Vermilion Bay, somewhere in there in New Iberia. But we could still see some shifts in this track because we don't have a well defined circulation and don't lock it in just yet. Just continue to check back. Our next update will be at 7 a.m. The next track update will be at 10 a.m. Of course, we'll do a cut in right here on channel four and on all of our digital platforms. Luckily, it does not linger as we get into the end of the week here, things clear out and we should have some pretty nice weather as we head into the weekend. Heads up for our boaters. Today is fine. Tomorrow is not bad, but Wednesday, obviously, things are cranking up as that hurricane approaches. Our high tides are gonna happen this morning and our low tides are this afternoon.