Monday 10PM Tropical Update: Impacts from Francine expected Tuesday, Wednesday

So far today, dry air is king. It is keeping francine from intensifying winds have stayed the same. Now, we have been watching that pressure closely and it has been steadily dropping since the earlier afternoon. So we will see if that is a continuing trend that would indicate it may be trying to intensify though, we really have not seen that on satellite as that dry air is really choking off the core of the storm. And if that core cannot get any healthier and really start the abundance of thunderstorms, this is not going to intensify very rapidly. Now, the intensification is expected to continue into tomorrow, maybe conditions that come become a little bit more favorable throughout the day. Now, it doesn't last for long because as the storm nears the coast, we will start to see the conditions worsening, strong wind shear and more dry air will likely either start weakening the storm before landfall or right after landfall. Certainly. And what we're looking at right now, possibly a two, but that is far from being written in stone tomorrow. As I've been mentioning, an earlier weather casts is kind of the key if this is able to organize a bit more, start to become a little bit better structured, then perhaps it will be a two before landfall and maybe at landfall, it would probably kind of peak and then hang on to that strength if it isn't. And it kind of is a more weak storm or a weaker storm, we'd probably start to see it weakening right up to the point of landfall. It does not look like it's gonna be an intensifying storm right up to landfall. So that right there is good. What we've seen is the shift in the models a little bit more to the west, although the hurricane center didn't really necessarily adjust their forecast per se because as we get closer, the cone starts to narrow. So it really isn't any different than it was as of the four o'clock advisory. And while the models have shifted a little bit, we didn't really see the hurricane center buying into that shift just yet. We'll see what happens, uh, transpiring tomorrow with that track eventually toward the northeast after it begins that north easterly motion, I don't see it really changing too much. So we'll probably have the landfall more or less locked in for Wednesday afternoon. Now, the strongest of the winds are really right near the core or within some of the thunderstorms near the center because the buoys right around the center are not even anywhere close to being tropical storm force. So at the moment the wind field is very, very small, of course, that is expected to change if the storm does intensify, as I mentioned, you know, right along the coastline, we've got strong wind shear as well as even more dry air. We'll start turning the storm is this ridge of high pressure. It's basically following along that path as well as an upper trough that'll be over Texas that will help the storm start mo moving toward the northeast, which is anticipated during the day tomorrow. It may be able to kind of get a little pocket of some moisture that's able to strengthen even within some increasing wind shear. But certainly by the time it reaches the coast, that wind shear is to start ripping it apart. And the dry air is gonna be a huge player in this. As I mentioned, it's already playing a factor in the storm that models weren't really seeing at the time. So they started to back off on that rapid intensification and something for us not only keeping the storm a little bit weaker, but as that dry air wraps around as the storm gets closer to us, that will start eroding away a lot of the rainfall that we could see from the storm. So it may be that those higher totals of 4 to 6 inches are never real that we see much, much less because if that dry air is able to disperse and evaporate a lot of the rainfall. We may not get into those heavier storms. And I've been mentioning the fact that this was not going to be a big rain maker for us. It's gonna be the wind threat, uh, wind chances here for tropical storm force at about 40 to 50% obviously greater as you had a little bit farther to the west. But really the winds going during the day on Wednesday likely would have some at times damaging winds, wind gusts up to 40 maybe even 50 miles an hour. The way things stand as of right now, the other threat aside from rainfall and really, I said that's more secondary would be the coastal flooding anticipating from Cocodrie off to the west, anywhere from 3 to 6 ft, maybe some isolated areas of nine, much of the Louisiana coast. However, only expecting about 1 to 3 above ground level, above normal ground level. So we're not expecting a massive storm surge for much of our viewing area with the exception of coastal Terrebonne Parish. And that really is gonna peak on Wednesday. So you still got time to do things run errands on Tuesday. And again, it's not gonna be very dangerous here on Wednesday. Not a great day to be out on the roads, but if you absolutely needed to be somewhere on Wednesday, it would still be ok for much of our area. The way things stand right now, quickly drying out and then warming up as we head into the weekend and early next week.