Weather Impact Alert Day: Storms moving through New Orleans Metro

And now at noon, we're making sure you're prepared on this weather impact alert, day storms are moving through the area right now. You're looking at new video in girt town as the rain came down just minutes ago. The weather has also left more than 2000 energy customers without power. Right now. Most of them are in the lower Algiers area. Well, good afternoon, I'm Whitney Miller. Thanks so much for watching. We're keeping an eye on those power outages and street flooding for you. But first Alexander Cranford is in the building with us and how much rain can we expect today? I know it's on and off in some spots. Yeah, and we are about to get a break for New Orleans, but in general, over the next three days, we are expecting 3 to 6 inches of rain, so good bit of rain on the way. Not all at once. Hopefully, but we actually do have the chance for some of these heavy downpours like you mentioned right now though. You can see clearly we have our batch of rain that we just had move around New Orleans. Continue north. So now it's out over Lake Pontchartrain and actually a lot of it doesn't look quite as heavy as those bright reds that you were seeing on radar when this was a little bit farther to the southeast of the city. But now we are seeing if you're in uptown, in parts of New Orleans, uh, around the West Bank, we're starting to see a little bit of clearing so we will get a break. It looks like in at least the next couple of hours not to say there might not be more rain later on right now around Thibodeaux and Houma. Also thunderstorms happening around Raceland, some pretty heavy rain moving in Slidell and the Mississippi coast also getting showers moving in at this point. But again, it's not quite as heavy as it could be looking at rain totals. We have already seen it, Ken are more than an inch of rain, more than an inch and a half in fact. And as we look ahead to the next two days today, tomorrow and Friday, we're talking about those 3 to 6 inch totals with some heavy rain at times. Definitely wanna watch for street flooding in the next few days when we get these rounds of storms. I'll be back with more in a minute. Alexandra. Thank you so much. Well, last week, we told you about a raised manhole in G town that sent a 45 year old man to the IC U after Wwl Louisiana shared his story the manhole was paved over. But locals say paving one spot of the street was not enough flooding on South Ren is still causing big problems for businesses on the block. Amelia Strahan joins us now, live from South Rind and Emilia. What are the conditions like where you are now? I see you standing in a puddle there. Yeah. So Whitney things have calmed down but just about an hour ago, right where I'm standing now, the rain was to the tip of my rain boots. It was actually pouring in a little bit. So let me show you what conditions looked like. Then just about, I would say this rain accumulated over the course of about half an hour. Water from the surrounding streets was rushing on the south. The lowest part of the street was holding the water just like a bowl. The city tells us they cleared catch basins along the street. But you can see here that a few of the drains were still having trouble keeping up. Now, after we shared Bradley Nod's story, the city did come and pave around the manhole. But the business owners that we spoke to said flooding has been a problem on the street for as long as they can remember. So Whitney, I'm here with Gabriel and is the owner of marker right here on this block. So tell me Gabriel, what are conditions like whenever it is one of those rainstorms that just doesn't stop. Sure. Well, like a lot of South Louisiana. You know, the rain can come down real hard and when it does, it stacks up pretty quickly. Um, so, yeah, it'll take about 30 minutes and we'll get the street. That's no problem. That's probably happened a dozen times this year and probably about six times, sorry, five times this year it's probably gotten about 5 ft of water in the street and whenever it gets into your business it kind of hits that point. Um, it's lumber which means it can get a little bit wet. But you know what happens when it gets really saturated? Do you guys lose money? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we can't sell stuff that's been flooded. Uh, and, you know, you know, it's lumber, every job site gets rained on but, um, the bottom parts get wet and it just holds the moisture and mildews and molds up. And so we just gotta throw the stuff away. And you told me before, before the interview. Um, how much do you guys usually u lose whenever it rains like that? Yeah. In a typical loss like that. It's probably about 5000 every time. It's been worse. It's been less. But, yeah, 5000 is a fair estimate. So 5000, 5 times a year this year. Yeah. Yeah, it's been getting a lot worse lately. There's a broken backflow valve there on the Washington Avenue canal. And so when the canal fills up it back flows up and you can see it just pouring down the street coming around the corner, the manhole cover gets blown up. There's so much pressure in there and we just flood from that. All right, Gabriel. Well, I definitely hope it does not get to that point today. Yeah, let's get it fixed. All right. So, you know, we hear this time and time again, Whitney um businesses that have to pay the financial repercussions for this street flooding. Um So like I mentioned, we hope that doesn't happen today. Reporting live from Gtown, Amelia Strahan, Wwl, Louisiana, Amelia. Thank you so much. Taking another look at those interview outages this afternoon right now, a little more than 2000 customers without power. According to interviews, outage map, most of the outage are in the lower algiers area. Energy expects power to be restored in about one hour at one o'clock. We'll need to watch out for street flooding over the next several days, especially if catch basins near you aren't cleaned out. New data from the city of New Orleans shows thousands of catch basins have not been cleaned so far this year. Despite millions of dollars being invested to getting it done, Winston Reid has more. Here at the corner of Saint Peter and Dur and Wall Streets, take a look at this catch basin that is barely visible. You see vegetation, trash and junk inside of that basin with the lid toppled over. It's one of 72,000 C basins. In the city, the city council allocated $10 million back in 2022 to clean the basins. Only about 5000 basins have been cleaned so far this year, some city officials say the pace is too slow allowing flooding to be a common concern. Councilman Joe Russo says another problem is sewage and water board taking the blame for basins not being cleaned. But if you have a block catch basin or a linear line that's collapsed or drainage line, that's too small sewage and water board gets really a lot of grief over the pumping problem. But really it's maybe the front end part of the system that's more problematic. Last year. Under 2500 catch basins were cleaned here in the city of New Orleans. The sewage and water board will take over the catch basins and manage them in 2025. Reporting in New Orleans, Winston, Reid, Wwl, Louisiana.