Wednesday 4 PM Tropical Update: Hurricane Francine approaches as a Category 2 storm

Welcome back everybody. It is four o'clock in the afternoon. Apparently hurricane Francine has gained strength. It is now a category two hurricane making its way on to Louisiana's coast as we speak. I'm Devin Bartolotta along with Katie Moore. Here, we've been covering this all afternoon, but the four o'clock update just came down. So let's get right out to chief meteorologist Chris Franklin with that update, Chris, it's not something we wanted to see, but I was talking the last time I was with you, this little burst of convection. We had seen a lot of those taller cloud tops really getting ripped apart by the dry air and wind shear and almost its last ditch effort. The storm was able to kind of concentrate a little bit of energy, get this explosion of thunderstorms and that is where we found winds of 100 miles an hour, which does now make this a category two. So it will be pushing on land throughout the next couple of hours as a cat two, not on land just yet. While we are seeing kind of the outer uh northeastern eye wall, which is where the strongest of the winds are, we were talking about those wind gusts earlier in Cocodrie. That's where we're getting some of the strongest winds on land in Terrebonne Parish kind of also extending into Saint Mary Parish. Now, the motion still toward the northeast at 17 miles an hour. And really, aside from that uh kind of burst of convection that increase in the winds, we also saw the pressures decrease at 972. Now, nothing else has changed with regards to what impacts we're anticipating through the rest of this afternoon evening. And tonight, how large the wind field will be? This is very concentrated right around the northeastern center of the storm and it is right within that eye wall. Nowhere else. Are you really going to find winds of 100 miles an hour? So again, as far as the impacts go, it does not change anything. The good news is, this will keep moving very quickly and will already be out of this by about one or 2 a.m. But on radar, that is where we're getting those initial bursts of those strongest winds of now being reported by the hurricane hunters of 100 mile per hour. So that does make it a category two. Again, this is kind of the last ditch effort by the storm to get a little bit more out of the energy that is uh kind of been able to concentrate around that center. And almost despite the fact that we do have that strong wind shear in place, it was able to take advantage of little bit of energy and right before it moves on the on shore again, in the next couple of hours, we're still probably, uh, almost two hours away from a landfall. The eye wall is certainly crossing on land, but we have to wait for the actual center of the eye to cross the coast. That is the official landfall of the storm. But where are we getting some of those intense rains and likely some of the strongest winds? Five mile Oak, southwest of Morgan City over Morgan City. Uh We have Lily Cummings in Houma. She's probably starting to get inundated with some intense rainfall and some of the strongest winds those continue down towards Chavan Coari. You're almost now kind of in the eye of the storm. We'll have to look at, we've got a couple of cameras that are down toward the coast. We'll have to take a look at those in just a moment, but this is moving very quickly. Notice Raceland Thibodeau just now getting on kind of the uh northern part of the eye wall itself where you're gonna find more of those intense winds. We'll see what the wind reports are from around the Thibodeaux area to see if they match or we were able to find even those 100 mile an hour winds and something that is at times almost misleading. There may be one observation point that was able to find the 100 mile an hour winds and then elsewhere, even nearby, you don't find winds supportive of that. So we just have to find that one observation with winds kind of at the high point to mark what the full strength of a hurricane is. You may not find those 100 mile an hour winds elsewhere within the band of, of uh, the eye wall that is now moving on shore again, the center is not too far away. So that will be crossing probably within an hour, maybe at the most two hours, which is about what the hurricane center had been saying as of their kind of updated forecast last night that we probably be looking at more of a late afternoon, evening time frame for the storm to make landfall and a little like that is coming to fruition again, wind or excuse me, motion toward the northeast at 17. Hopefully, in the next several observations, we'll start to see those, uh, that forward motion increase a little bit more. We're getting another round of some more of those intense rains over the metro area. As I said, though, they are moving very, very quickly and that has also been an issue. We only have had a couple of tornado warnings issued, but if we do see any additional, it kind of falls within these little cells that race through very, very fast. And at times, they tend to be embedded within some high wind gusts. So they're very hard to track. They usually don't really show up on velocities very well because you've got this uh usually weaker wind of uh rotation, the the wind speed signature within strong winds associated with a hurricane, a landfall hurricane. So sometimes those little spin up tornadoes are either not actually occurring because the, again, these are usually radar um indicator, not actually observed on the ground And they tend to be embedded within some strong winds either way, a heavy rainfall at times in pockets on the North Shore and also into Mississippi that will continue and start to increase as we go through the rest of the afternoon. And again, conditions as they are worsening for parts of Southeast Louisiana, they will continue to worsen until the storm center is on land and moving away. So it kind of is a build up to the worst of the storm and then a gradual increase and improvement of weather as we had later on into the night tonight. So we are really just now getting into the worst of the storm beginning along the coastline. A lot of folks have been asking why are we paying so much attention to the Bayou parishes because the Bayou parishes are getting the brunt of the storm. We should also see the storm gradually weakening once it loses that warm water, its source of energy. But something we talked about in Ida, there is the Brown Ocean effect with the storms and it especially is true in Southeast Louisiana. Once it crosses land, we know, uh, anyone that lives in the bayou parishes, especially crossing land is a very loose term. It is still very much over bayous and marshes. So it is still able to gain some energy or at least maintain some energy. Even over those warm marsh waters, they are very shallow but they tend to have temperatures in the lower eighties. So as long as it is over some source of moisture, even at times, it just has to have been saturated ground, even ground that is solid, but has been saturated by water that too can lead to what is called the brown ocean effect. So as it crosses land, we don't tend to in Louisiana see it immediately start weakening. It tends to be a little bit of a slower process. What we will have going in our favor is the increasing wind shear, the dry air and the fact that it is moving very, very quickly and that forward speed, it doesn't look like it's going to slow down. If anything, it should start to speed up as we go later on into the afternoon. So it was on visible sate or we were showing you visible satellite a moment ago. This is now the infrared colorized and it did show it looked to be promising was all those thunderstorms were really starting to fall apart. It looked like finally the wind shear, drier air taking over and then it was able to get that one little last burst of energy to kick up the winds of 100 miles an hour. And as you see at the bottom of the screen has made it a category two storm. So nothing else has changed impacts or we're not expecting anything different. The forward speed hopefully will start to pick up kind of move the uh graphic here a little bit again, this is the position estimated by about 1 a.m. So roughly 2 to 3, it'll already be moving out of the state. So we're not talking about a duration uh moving through Southeast Louisiana like we did with IDA. This is gonna be a much faster moving storm as far as the heaviest of the rainfall goes. We're getting some intense rain at times here, but so far rainfall totals. And again, we're not even at the worst of some of the rainfall has been manageable. We're not expecting any widespread flooding and it may be that and this is not exactly what some of the QPF models, the quantitative precipitation forecast models have been showing, they keep trying to indicate some of the higher totals right along and east and then much, much drier off to the west. That has not been the trend with the, the models keep trying to show more of the heavier rainfall wrapping around onto the northern and western side and it certainly looks like that may come to fruition as we've had that new little burst of energy on the northern north northeastern part of the storm with the dry air wrapping around, we might see that kind of wrap back onto the western side. We'll see what the trend is based on satellite data and now radar data as it is well within range of the Hammond radar throughout the afternoon to see if that is indeed what some of those storms do. But again, a little bit more of an atypical type storm with the drier side due to that drier air. Now more on the southern and even southeastern quadrant. So even as we get toward 10 o'clock South shore may already start to see some improvement, improving weather with regards to the rainfall, still had the stronger winds, although it'll be coming from the other direction won't be southeast. It'll be more west and northwest, but we might start getting a break in the rainfall. And then as we continue through the later part of the night in the early morning hours, heaviest rainfall, nail lifting and weakening into Mississippi by 230 we should see much of Southeast Louisiana already starting to dry out. And we have pretty good agreement with both of the GFS and Euro models indicating more of the northern western side with that heavy rainfall and a little bit of a not completely dry but a drier slot on the southern and southeastern side of the storm, which again would just bring faster breaks in those showers as we continue through the rest of the night and going into the early morning hours, then we all start drying out and again, immediately improving conditions for the rest of the day winds at Morgan City officially only at 31 miles an hour. So you're not too far from the city center of the storm. We had uh Lily Cummings set up our weather gauge out in Houma. So we'll see what the winds are doing there as the storm closes in. But as I mentioned, even with those 100 mile an hour winds reported, uh with Francine, they are gonna be in a very isolated location. We're not talking about a huge wind field of 100 plus mile an hour winds that is just not going to be the case uh with this storm. In fact, the winds inland and we'll see again, as I've mentioned, our HOA station, the official weather observation station in Houma has been down for a while. So, uh closer in Galliano, sustained winds are only at 17 miles an hour and gusting up to 35 and the storm is not too far away. So the wind field does appear to be rather small, which may be why. And I was showing this a moment ago why some of the models have backed down a little bit on just how well now we kind of back up a little bit here if we change the uh, viewpoint or change the, uh kind of pause position. Uh The model has the potential of 60 to even 80 plus mile an hour wind gusts in the metro area as we get later on to the night wind gusts like that will do some significant damage. Now, the sustained winds look to be hold, uh holding at about 50 miles an hour, a little bit later on this afternoon evening, going more into the evening hours after sunset. But we could see some very significant wind gusts even in the metro area that would likely cause more tree limbs coming down and that just leads to more power outages. Hopefully, that is a little bit more isolated in nature. As I'd mentioned, the model for the rainfall keeps indicating this kind of uh um track of heavier storms, but that really doesn't fall in line with what the hurricane center is saying the center line would be doing or at least the center of the storm would be doing. This would likely be the path of some of the heaviest rainfall. And with the models, gfs and Euro have been indicating and most of that may be a little bit more on the western side. So we will see, we have to also take into account that drier air with the how it will impact our rainfall totals throughout the rest of the afternoon. Again, we've seen m uh uh uh manageable rainfall totals thus far, but we have not got into the worst of the rain as far as the coastal flooding concerns. Uh are there, we are probably reach some of the highest levels along our coastline in Terrebonne, Lafoe as well as out towards Saint Mary. This is probably about the highest as the storm is just starting to move on land as it moves inland. It's going to take some time for that water to begin receding. But really as it does further move northward, we then start to get more of a northwest westerly motion of the wind and that may help to start pushing that water away from the coastline. So as I've said, we will gradually see improving conditions as soon as later on tonight, really less than 12 hours. So within the next 12 hours, we're gonna get the worst of the storm as well as the improving conditions right after the storm has passed through. So we don't have a long duration to have to deal with Francine through the night and into early tomorrow morning. This is not what we have seen in the past. Uh almost a little bit more typical of kind of like Zeta was not as strong as Zeta was not expecting the eye to pass right over the city of New Orleans, but kind of the duration of how long we have to deal with the impacts is a little bit more of like what Zeta was and people kept saying Zeta moved in and out. Now we did have the power outages, but it was also a category three storm. This is not, this is not going to be a Zeta, but it more in terms of how fast it looks like it's gonna move through, uh Southeast Louisiana the rest of this evening and into the early morning hours. So another just real quick as you see at the bottom of the screen, Francine did become as of the four o'clock advisory. A category two hurricane hunters were able to find within kind of this little burst of thunderstorms. Those winds now supportive of 100 miles an hour, which does make it a category two. The wind field though has really not changed. We're actually kind of from some of our observing stations struggling to find winds even supportive of a hurry, let alone 100 mile an hour wind. So the wind field it appears is very, very small with the storm and it is a very, very small storm. So thankfully, the worst of the impacts do not look to be very far removed from the center of the storm. But, uh, at least based on computer models, we could see some hurricane force wind gusts a little bit later in the afternoon. Uh, certainly along the coastline and some of our bayou parishes or possibly even into the metro area.