Monday 5am Tropical Update: Hurricane expected to make landfall in Louisiana by Wednesday

Welcome back. It's 444 here on your Monday as we are tracking our developing tropical system in the Gulf of Mexico. We are expecting there to be a land falling hurricane in Louisiana in three days that does not leave a whole lot of time for preparations especially in our coastal areas. But right now, we do have impacts from this tropical system. What is expected to be um um our next storm here moving into the area as we get into Wednesday, landfall is expected later Wednesday with rain in our area, stronger wind gust and also some storm surge. So today and tomorrow are gonna be the days where the winds aren't really that strong. We will have rain building in especially tomorrow, but by Wednesday, we are gonna be watching our incoming system. Now here is the official track. As of 4 a.m. You could see there making its turn up to the north strengthening to have it as a category one hurricane making landfall in South Louisiana currently centered around Lafayette making landfall later Wednesday in the moving inland Wednesday night into Thursday, hanging out around south of Louisiana and then moving up to the north and notice that cone does include parts of Southeast Louisiana. So there is still some uncertainty on exactly where the center of this developing hurricane will make landfall. It could make landfall in our area, especially once you get into Saint Mary Parish, Trebon Parish, those areas certainly keeping a very close eye on this. And I caution you to, uh when you're tracking this thing and looking at the track, we could still see some changes in that track because we don't have a well developed system. It is still just an unorganized developing system. It doesn't have a closed circulation. So models are guessing exactly where that circulation will close off and that could still change. So we need to give it probably today before we do have that well defined circulation, we do have plenty of showers and storms trying to form around it. And, uh, until we actually get that center, we're gonna watch this forecast very, very closely. Our tropical models are centered in over South Louisiana, especially around, uh, Lafayette, but we have seen a subtle each jog each time these have updated the past 12 hours. So does that trend continue? We'll certainly watch some of our high resolution models do have a stronger hurricane coming in to our local area. I wanna show you one of these, there's a couple of these showing this so it's not gonna be in a hurry to move today or even tomorrow by Tuesday. It's still way out here in the Gulf here. We are just getting some showers as we get into Wednesday though. It starts to speed up and that's when it advances into South Louisiana. You can see there that's a hurricane making landfall. This Pacific model somewhere near Vermilion Base, Mary Parish and close to Terrebonne Parish. So that's the trend. We are certainly gonna be keeping an eye on. This is Wednesday evening and then it moving across the area uh weakening into a tropical storm. Now, if that track tracks close to like Baton Rouge or Morgan City, the center that would bring us wind impacts to Southeast Louisiana. You can see winds could gust over 90 to 100 miles an hour down here along the coast where that storm is making landfall. Winds in the city could be tropical storm force, same thing for the North Shore and then decreasing impacts as you head off to the east. But depending on where the core of that storm comes inland, that's where you're gonna have your biggest winds and that could be somewhere around Southeast Louisiana, especially in the Bayou Parishes and into the river parishes, rainfall totals. Now, this may not be a terrible thing because the storm is gonna be moving. It's not stalling. So we may never really see our totals add up probably 3 to 6. It just looks like a good bet. Now, depending on how strong this gets, we are gonna be watching storm surge, especially down here in Saint Mary, in Taraba where that onshore flow is really cranking some of our guidance is suggesting up to 7 ft of storm surge. Of course, we will get those detailed numbers in from the hurricane center and we will relay those as soon as we do. So we don't have any watches and warnings right now that will likely change at some point today. Once again, we just don't have a lot of time to prepare for this one. So we are thinking probably the category one hurricane, but I wanna have a caveat here of, there are some models that show this being stronger and we always say prepare a category higher. So down along the coast, especially Saint Mary Trebon, you need to be getting ready for this system as it could bring you bigger impacts even in the city though we're watching for some stronger winds throughout Wednesday into Wednesday night. And then luckily things clearing out Thursday, that system is moving out and by Friday and Saturday, things are looking a lot calmer, right.