[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] e e e e e e [Music] want to do everything tonight but if you have to wait until tomorrow morning you have a couple hours early tomorrow MH and then and that's really it and then you said the flooding was that in K yeah but is it going to be in Kenner y so where area wide we're calling for roughly 4 to 6 in of rain but we've been talking about that isolated Corridor of rain that could maybe push up to 6 to 8 in and maybe isolated pockets of 10 to 12 in of rain it's hard to say exactly where that will set up it's looking more West Western spots so places like Kenner the metro area generally expecting 4 to 6 Ines of rain so we can get the street flooding of of course with that and and of course we've been talking about the surge for our um for areas outside of the levy the levy system are outside of the hurricane risk reduction system and that brings me to my next question which one of the viewers wanted to know when should they expect surge in the lacome area so to we're starting to see some of the the water kind of Pile in so um overnight tonight is when we have our high tide uh luckily tomorrow in the afternoon when the worst of the impacts come in will be low tide I know it's not a huge help but it's something to kind of take anything so we'll be low tide during the afternoon tomorrow so tomorrow for lome it's kind of just going to be an all day sort of uh water kind of piling in for Wednesday so surge expected tomorrow uh throughout the course of the day and then seeing those conditions rapidly improving for Thursday so Thursday our winds will start to come in from the west and Thursday the water will start to get pushed uh in the opposite direction so I think the storm surge will be kind of just bad all day tomorrow kind of going downhill throughout the day the worst of it going into the afternoon and evening hours but then things getting a lot better into Thursday but I did want to say on Thursday even though conditions will be improving Thursday the rain will be done the storm will be out of here there still be standing water you know we could still be dealing with River flooding of course across the area so there will be standing water maybe some additional flooding that's going to be taking some time for it to recede and go down so even though the storm will be gone Thursday we can still be dealing with some flooding into Thursday and we've had those saturated grounds all righty and then if you know that your area is prone to flooding then you are more likely to probably have some more flooding um what about our friends in Sidell so similar impacts across the board The Heavy Rain that the 4 to 6 Ines of rain is kind of an area cover our bases because it's possible that that's the amount of rain that we could get just Area Wide but the localized higher amounts where we're talking 6 to 10 in books to set up west of the Slidel area more West so Western spots so San beo Parish Westward uh for our Bayou parishes will probably see that Corridor of maybe the highest rain of 6 to 10 plus inches so Slidel area four to six inches of rain The Heavy Rain um The Surge possible for like the wries you know the lake Bourne Area 3 to 5 ft for the worst case iio surge for for St Tam parish and of course the wind gusts to 50 to 60 MPH but or not or sustained winds rather to 50 to 60 M hour but gusts may get up to Hurricane Force strength you know 70 to 80 m per hour gusts are possible tomorrow during that midday evening time frame this is why you need to be in your house at that time FR all right my last question and this one came from someone who I think must be a weather expert as well because it's a very technical question they want to know with the current projected path what wind directions should we expect in the metro area from south and east that's a good question yes is it okay I don't like what are you talking about like we've been talking about we've got the East Wind now the East Wind will continue and then it will become more of that southeasterly so east Southeast wind is expected tomorrow east Southeast wind for much of the day tomorrow and then as the storm departs we'll see that storm you we know it's counterclockwise winds wind direction e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e afternoon and evening before the storm is north of us I put the uh forecasted Line This is the 4:00 uh forecasted track so we will get a new one at 10: but what I wanted to looked for is is the storm following along with what the Hurricane Center thought it would do as of four and sure enough it is following almost basically right along that Center Line so I don't believe we are going to see any real change in the forecasted track also considering the forecast models are right just about in between the uh middle of our forecast cone so I don't think we're going to see any real change in the track of the storm and as far as the intensity goes most models indicating uh uh one or kind of quickly lowering as it moves a little bit closer toward that more hostile environment along the Louisiana Coastline so the winds at 75 again we're not going to get new information until 10: what we have though been steadily watching is a very clearly defined eyewall structure out of the Brownsville radar so if we were just looking at Satellite you would not be able to see that this is kind of going below the clouds which is what helps us out we're able to get these more well-defined fixes of the center of the storm when it is within radar range Radars are only on land we don't have these out in the open Gulf open Caribbean open Atlantic Waters but when they are near land you really want to take advantage of the radar and that does have that generally Northeastern motion obvious as well as that fairly well-defined kind of eyewall structure not necessarily an eye that would indicate kind of a a clear slot right through the satellite and we don't have that but it does indicate that this is really For the First Time The Storm becoming its best organized that just happened a lot later than the models had at one time indicating this was again supposed to have occur kind of 24 hours ago so with that being said I also don't think we're going to see an intensity change per the hurricane Center's 10:00 forecast so I don't think we're going to have any Real Surprises with the 10:00 advisory probably not much of a change in the track not much of a change in the timing and not much of a change in the intensity up to the point of landfall all good news we'll be looking for that at 10 as far as the Windfield goes again we're now finding those 75 mph winds within the strongest of the storms right near the center but those strongest winds are only right near the center check out this buoy which thankfully is very close to the center of the storm winds sustained are only just now over the last couple of hours reaching tropical storm Forest so the wind field for the hurricane is right at the center it's going to be a very small area and the tropical storm Force Windfield is just now starting to spread out from the center obviously we're expecting that Windfield to get a little bit larger question will be how much larger does it get as it starts moving toward the Coast winds will be the main issue and I tell you what figuring out the winds over the entirety of our area very very difficult overall we'll start to see those winds picking up along the coastline during the morning more widespread midday and throughout the night 50 to 60 MPH sustained possible on the high end if the storm isn't able to really get its act together or it starts weakening with that wind shear it's possible those wind speeds could come down and highest gust about 70 to 80 at times our numbers kind of broad brush and will tend to give you more of the extremes on the higher end of the scale just to be prepared for hopefully nothing worse than that and hopefully uh just much much weaker than that but we're kind of giving you the worst case scenario what you will need to do again you've got some time tonight and even into early tomorrow secure all of those loose items bring anything that you have outside indoors or at least up against your home now throughout the day tomorrow kind of already beginning tonight uh we'll see those water levels increasing due to the Imp uh um approaching storm surge thankfully we'll have low tide overnight or excuse me low tide excuse me high tide will be overnight tonight and low tide will be right around the time that we're expecting some of the highest storm surge not much but it does help a little bit so for the lake so kind of piling up into Lake Bourne Lake Mora we're expecting about 3 to 5 foot that also includes generally south of the Mississippi sound or north of the Mississippi sound I should say and then for our Southern facing and Eastern facing shorelines so everything kind of between uh from lefo east to the mouth of the river and then up east of the river toward the buuy marsh expecting four to 7 feet a highest totals 5 to 10 in tabone Bay out toward Vermilion Bay what you would need to do is get to Higher Ground we saw uh Dan cadry Lily Cummings earlier they are closing some of the seaw wall so that time of leaving is kind of gone as most of our seaw wall are starting to close now through tomorrow until late in the night will be the heavy rainfall threat again kind of a broad brushed overall four to 6 in I think that's more on the high and isolated could see some higher amounts and possibly even higher right along the path of wherever Francine is able to make landfall and then continue Inland towards Southwestern Mississippi and what you would need to do is obviously just avoid those flooded roads during the day winds will start to turn Breezy overnight tonight again early in in the morning even toward the midday you will have some time before the winds really start uh whipping if you still have things outside trash cans Halloween decorations bring them in the last thing we need is a big skeleton tumbling down the street through the afternoon and evening is when those winds really start picking up we're expecting sustained at 50 m an hour and winds could Gust in the metro area to around lowend hurricane Forest those would be wind gusts not sustained winds almost as fast as it happens during the late night and overnight hours those winds are already subsiding and changing direction subsiding good news because if they are below 30 m an hour most power Crews can start going out assessing the damage and begin making the repairs so hopefully that starts as soon as maybe pre Dawn on Thursday and throughout the day on Thursday and also what should start to help is the fact that we will have a kind of Westerly or west northwesterly wind which would then start taking all that water and pushing it back out and away from our Coastline so we should start seeing almost immediately Thursday early morning improving conditions throughout the rest of the day and throughout the rest of the week rainfall totals again kind of a rough estimate of four plus to five maybe 6 in the higher totals are going to fall within kind of a band of wherever the storm is able to make landfall and then continue Inland that's where we're going to see some of the highest totals potential storm surch these are the feet above ground level and along the coast generally Coca so Western and Central tabone Bay out toward Vermillion Bay we're looking at about 6 ft at one time some of the heights at also been in some spots near nine that seems to have backed in a little bit because we're not expecting a category 2 at landfall we're expecting a stronger cat one Inland though that water will be able to make its way up toward Morgan City and even Pierre Part so kind of up into the aaala Basin up along the Louisiana Coastline at three maybe pockets of six especially again in tabone bararia Bay we're looking at probably about 1 to two or ex me 1 to three as kind of the same out toward the buuy marsh and then in the Lakes again low end 1 to3 the higher end of that could be 3 to5 and that would be I think at the extreme with this storm making landfall early tomorrow morning the tornado threat will also be there but that always is secondary to the stronger winds the tornado threat we tend to see almost numerous uh tornado warnings issued uh throughout the course of the evening and night with a land falling storm and notice it would all be generally on the Eastern side of the storm they tend to occur within already heavy W uh heavy rain and strong wind so you might find winds gusting up to 65 to 70 M hour and then a weak ef0 or ef1 tornado with Winds of 75 to 80 M hour so they tend out to be a lot greater than what the surrounding winds are but that is certainly a possibility and something we'll have to watch for through the course of the afternoon and evening and again that is all in really the northeastern quadrant of the storm what will start helping in us we were talking about earlier with that forward speed is this this is an upper trough that is moving out of northern Mexico and Texas as that nears where Francine is it will start picking up that forward speed and that's why we are expecting the storm to kind of move in and out very very quickly trough not impacting it just yet may start to see that during the overnight and certainly early tomorrow that will start speeding that storm right along toward the coast with increasing wind shear and increasing drier air which as that wraps around could help to limit or weaken the storm limit the strengthening or start weakening the storm as it nears the coast and definitely that dry air wrapping around on the Southern and Eastern side will help us out with regards to some of those higher rainfall rate so we will hopefully get into that drier air and that will start to immediately kind of evaporate some of that potentially heavier rain so that is all again working in our favor looking at radar at the moment generally this has been kind of somewhat associated with the broad overall structure kind of the large overall upper pattern of Francine overall though the rainfall today has been manageable what we do have on radar right now kind of light a few pockets of maybe some moderate showers nothing particularly heavy and this is for both sides of the lake we also have plenty of breaks in the rain this is far more extensive during the earlier part of the the day and it was able to drop about an inch or more of rainfall at a number of locations generally south of the lake did pick up almost an inch and 3/4 out at Lakefront Airport not quite as much on the NorthShore little bit of good news for the river flooding concerns that we have there because you're going to get inundated with the heavier rainfall and then that water from all of our Northshore Rivers won't be able to flow during the day tomorrow back out into Lake Pon train because of the higher water levels during the day so flooding again will certainly be a concern especially speaking of the river levels but that is not going to be a long duration issue we should start to see those water levels coming down almost immediately Thursday and going into the weekend for the NorthShore Rivers 77 degrees our current temperature due Point plenty humid outside at 75 temperatures have been kept in check all day to actually I need to go back and look at what the high for the day was we've generally been in the 70s all day we're going to stay in the 70s during the day tomorrow our 7-day forecast high temperatures only in the 70s that rain chance throughout the day it looks like we'll get maybe an occasional break but for the most part it'll at least be kind of a light to moderate steady rain with pockets of heavier rain we'll also be looking at the tropical storm and possibly hurricane Forest winds the hurricane Forest winds sustained are going to be in a much more isolated band of wherever Francine comes Inland could see a few showers kind of early Thursday morning I'm talking midnight 1 2 a.m. and then wrapping up for the rest of the day most of Thursday will be dry in improving conditions less humid not bad after the storm so for those without power it is not going to be a hot stretch of weather a little bit warmer toward the weekend but manageable we're not talking mid90s and heat IND de season the triple digits so thankfully while a lot of folks will be cleaning up hopefully very few without power for any extended period it isn't awful like an August type storm would be in the aftermath of Francine and when we say aftermath we're just talking about what we know will be some damage hopefully nothing widespread and hopefully nothing extensive as we begin kind of the cleaning up and assessing what occurred on Thursday morning yeah let's all hope for that thanks so much Chris we appreciate that getting the latest from him of course we're all waiting for that 10:00 update from the National Hurricane Center the new cone the new anticipated track we're getting so close to when this is going to make landfall really less than 24 hours from now almost less than 12 hours from yeah I was going to say we're less than 12 hours from now you should be in your house hunkered down right can't say it well we can say that enough I I hate I hate that term we hate that term but but it is what it is it is what in LA in a in absence of a better term hunker down by 8: a.m. tomorrow securely in your house and feeling uh you know with the doors feeling hunkered closed feeling feeling hunkered all right yes that's where you should be in you know less than 12 hours from now but um you know we've been continuing to cover this storm this area of course has a long history of dealing with hurricanes it certainly does and earlier today our David Hammer got the chance to speak with uh Russell hore yes the lieutenant general who was here he was one of the Katrina Heroes he's definitely well familiar uh with what it's like to have to handle a storm so David caught up with him he's now an environmental activist he's also uh been working in Haiti uh trying to improve human rights there so he uh has been a man on a mission and was really a for during Hurricane Katrina so let's hear what he had to say today Lieutenant General Russell Honore thank you so much for joining us really appreciate it so it's been 19 years since you came in after Hurricane Katrina and said Don't Get Stuck on Stupid are we still stuck on stupid well some of our conditions have not changed that we live in the hurricane prone area number one and number two uh the storms keep getting be more frequent and appear and stronger and our coastline is getting weaker not stronger even though New Orleans did get a flood protection system the rest of our Coast is pretty vulnerable and we've continued to build uh things like natural gas plants right on the water so if you look at Cameron Parish now there's a LG plant facing the water at Campa Paris they've evacuated the place since yesterday and those plants are very volatile so we worry about what happens if they lose total power and they unable to control that natural gas we have done some studies with the green army that would show if one of those natural gas plants blew up it would be equivalent to the size weapon that was dropped in Japan in World War I so now we got one down the plma parish it's not online yet but we put a a facility that's brought hundreds of trucks into plma Parish with one Road in one road out looked like a good idea at the time but how do we Evacuate the people on short notice and we saw the impct I'm sorry we saw the impacts during Katrina from the Murphy Oil uh spill and you know we just had issues last year with Marathon Oil and a big fire there uh I know with your work with the green army you're focusing on those environmental uh issues do you see that as the biggest concern from a storm like Francine I say the biggest concern is is coastal flooding that that b so current prediction up to 10 feet when you got a town like H that's elevation is s feet and some of those areas are not mandatory evacuation and with what 20% of our homes in Louisiana people live in mobile homes so when you get hurricane Force wins combined with surge along the coast because the surge water will come in 30 to 40 miles and there's still a lack of understanding the people in and appreciation for surge water we know the power of Serge water during Katrina the Mississippi River ran North through plagman Parish so it's very powerful source of energy that can overcome the average Levy system so I worry about places like homar and franklon because that water will come up those buuse canals and channels and get into communities that might have survived eight or 10 inches of rain but the surge water is coming from the ocean and I'm a little concerned because as of yesterday the state was leaving it to the parishes to get people to shelter inside the parish I just don't know there's many places South of Highway 90 where people can shelter inside the parish and the state at that time at not opening any shelters they had a meeting this morning so I may be dated a little bit but we're waiting to see if the state traditionally St with open melon and Alexandria for people who don't have a place to go is that open by the state is that your main concern at the state level let's start at the state level obviously you know where the failures were after Katrina and some of the other storms that we've experienced where where do you see the your biggest areas of concern from the state response at this point is they have a state run shelters that can intake people that have no place to go you know 80% of the people 90% of the people will have some place to go then there's about 10% of people with no rides so we're leaving up to the parish to provide the ride and provide the shelter uh and that's normally a shared State responsibility if may come later today I don't want to second guess the goep and the governor but even in City of New Orleans we can shelter people there's a case of PTSD in New Orleans that we'll never shelter anybody in the city again well maybe you shelter in your people from Grand Island you got a convention set over there you got a super doome this isn't the storm you got to worry about ripping the roof off necessarily in Houston guess where they shelter people in Houston the George Brown convention center they put 7,000 people in there and they're organized to do it the problem in Louisiana we've never organized to do that in New Orleans it was a hasty shelter at the sub doome and the r Fai and but the convention center stood strong and it was dry but it wasn't resourced there's no reason why the convention center isn't taking people from south of new or that need place and people in New Orleans that could flood there are a lot of places in New Orleans East and other places that's going to flood where are those people going to go because the state has B into this Covenant will never open a large shelter again so we try to open itty bitty shelters inside communities and and that can work but how do we help the people from south of us not having to go to Mississippi now let me ask you about the federal response because I know there's concern because FEMA's Disaster Relief Fund is depleted uh as of July 31st they've got a $6.2 billion shortfall and they're in the immediate needs funding situation now so what needs to happen there and is femma going to be able to respond if necessary FEA will be able to respond what they'll do is take money that's dedicated to other programs and move it they'll take they'll respond to this they may not they won't have the money to recover but they will respond the generators will come in the hospitals the ambulances if we need them the helicopters the Army the Air Force if that's needed to back up to that don't worry about that's not a problem what is the problem is that the budget need to be approved and the budgets all held up in the Congress now well why does this keep happening why does this keep happening I mean last year it was uh basically paused from August 29th to October 7th while they waited for the funding to be approved here we go worse than that David Hammer the national flood insurance program is out of money it need to be reauthorized now I saw this morning Senator Kennedy is advocating to get that thing out of the Senate the problem is that there are other senators and he has such a great relationship with all the senators from up North and people from the other is is is charisma and great way of communicating with everybody else they're not his Ro and helping him do something if you understand what I'm saying in a sarcastic way he's trying to get the national flood yeah trying to get the national flood insurance money reappropriated but the there's many people in the Senate not enthusiastic about doing it yeah but Senator Cassidy uh doesn't have that issue and he made some very strong appeals to try to expand nfip to try to bring in more than just 5 million homes across the country so that the risk will be reduced the same thing Senator Kennedy has been saying why is that getting stuck and why do we also same thing as with the FEMA funding why does it always have to be this same thing every few years where it's not funded well both of our Senators are fighting hard for to get this approved you know with all joking aside there are senators from other state to say well you know it's always Louisiana and you guys on the coast you know you ought and it's always argument but the way the weather pattern is going I mean they have floods in the midwest now they floods in New York California Florida uh everybody is suffering from the impact of extreme weather but some of them Nar it some of them are they're doing this for political stunt to try and make the current Administration look bad because we can't get legislation pass you know it's politics and we're in the political season I always feel sorry for a community when we have a hurricane during presidential elections because they under reported at the national level and they don't get the level of enthusiastic support as they should from Washington because people are running for office your Congressman are running for office half your senators are running for office and but hopefully they can get the INF flood insurance done and they can get the budget approved at least under continued resolution so we can handle recovery I think the response F has got it's the recovery money that whatever might need to be appropriated they need to have some money in there to get that started and hopefully this afternoon with any luck the president will approve uh governor landre was very keen and asking early yesterday for pre-storm declaration which will cover all the costs that people would have expended in evacuation and what the parishes might spend I'm worried about the execution of the evacuations at the parish level C parish is very strong Yesterday by dark no Ambulance Service no uh First Response responding you evacuating so they were very clear I have not specifically seen what the other parishes have done other than announce what zones in mandatory evacuation but David you know mandatory evacuation don't be mandatory you know it's mandatory from the perspective if we have high water or you flood we're not going to come get you because we told you to evacuate until after the storm pass so I I I'm hoping down at the parish level along the coast from cam all the way over to Fort Fon and South plagman Parish that people are evacuating and I see no evidence of that major evacuation now people may be going and live with other people in the parish but I think you encourage people to evacuate and then what happened to people without rides the other stupid part we do is we don't move the cattle from south of the industrial canal we lost thousands ahead of cattle in all of our storms and when you ask the Cattleman why didn't you move to cattle north of the kadash canal you said we couldn't catch him well you caught him two months ago when you were time to take the caves off of them and and the reason and not done if they lose cattle the USDA have a program will pay them for those cows plus the C so they they take that risk and not spend the money to move the cows and Al to the industrial for now if they L the government goingon to pay them and that's a crime damn shame what about those what about the power grid general what what are you looking for here obviously we had a major major failure in the New Orleans area during Ida do you think that the improvements that entery has done and others have done in those years since are going to take care of that I think if we don't go over 100 m wind we might be in pretty good shape and in New Orleans area but you're on the right front of the storm you can get a tornado and take the big lies down obviously the improvements they have done it made a big difference and we don't have as many trees anymore because a lot of them went down in the last storm but that's what baton rou it's a it's a disaster waiting to happen I mean you go down Highland Road in Baton Rouge and you see the trees with donut holes in them and power lines on both sides that's about as stupid as you can get I'm I live in a subdivision that the power is underground but it has to come through that area to get here by distribution and service line we got a real tree problem b as you remember in gustof it cut the lights out for for days because they're not cutting the trees back they haven't seen a tree they don't like and then people have trees on their property that overshadow the line coming into the house but what I'll say about trees is if you love your tree you want it next to your house don't sleep in that house with a tree that could go down be every year the first death in Louisiana is a tree on a house don't sleep in that house if you don't want to cut it down or sleep in the other side of the house find a refuge but don't go to sleep with a tree banging on the top of your roof that is a as unneeded risk people taken another question I don't know know if you've been following the offshore oil and gas uh operations the evacuations that weren't followed in 2020 the Deep waterer Asgard incident do you uh have any thoughts about that and whether the industry is uh learning its lesson yeah my concern is two things they normally get two or three days with something coming out of off of Cuba or Haiti or Miami they get that two or three days number one and number two is in the in the western [Music] [Applause] [Music] Gulf done proper M risk mitigation and got those men and women off those rigs that are at risk and and a lot of them get paid big money for this I just hope they're doing the right thing and getting those crews out today because tomorrow the winds will be untenable helicopters won't make it out there small craft won't make it out there well General is there anything else that you want our viewers to know obviously your perspective on this is invaluable you've seen it from every angle yeah if you got friends and runs on the coast tell them empty to freeze to come on up we'll have a barbecue tonight get the hell out of there please friends and relative get away you can always go back but if the surge water get worse the other thing is I'm concerned about is the people in the river paves between Baton Ridge and New Orleans if we the storm vary and goes through there with 80 90 mph wind between B rge 150 chemical plants if you near live near those plants just be aware the aware of what's going on and watch for tornadoes because if a tornado hit one of those plants it ca cause a a major disruption and the plants don't want this to happen they're working their butt off and the fact that it's raining today they they're letting off excess product we will have a raise in the in the climate warming today because all the product that plants are discharging to try to make them safe or for the employees and for the community all these are products we use so I it g to happen but I worry about those 150 plants between bat Rouge and New Orleans if you live near wei1 make sure you stay aware if you smell something and it's burning your eyes call 911 because that mean it's toxic oh we had those calls coming in a year ago at Marathon near the Marathon Oil plant and they were being told it was safe and now people are complaining of having lasting impact class action suit that's what they need to do they need to call somebody and have a class action sh because they need to be held accountable because the state won't hold them accountable you know that the State Environmental office has said their job is to be friendly with the plants and help the plants succeed they're not doing their job under Section n of the Constitution which safety if the people come before the plants they they have gotten in bed with the plants because the plants give them political donation money I mean that's the other truth of what we got to live with in Louisiana well good work by the guardian to uh expose some of that with the Marathon Oil uh fire last year so uh thank you so much General honor I appreciate you coming on and sharing your expertise wide ranging expertise and and insight really appreciate it hang in there New Orleans take care of your neighbors it's going to flood you going to get some water on your tires yall going to get some water on your tires that's that's for sure that is for sure Lieutenant General Russell hore there drawing on Decades of experience dealing with emergencies and natural disasters yes and evacuations and human rights I mean that's all up his alley obviously a wide ranging interview there with David Hammer this afternoon uh talking about what we should expect in this coming storm what he feels officials need to do ahead of things like this concerns that he has about everything from evacuating oil rigs to evacuating cattle you know you don't think about the fact that there are a lot of farms especially down in areas like plaman Parish uh along Highway 23 in particular I know that I've been there when uh there have been cattle rescues after hurricanes um and so getting cattle out is something that you don't even think about that that's something that people would have to do but it is and uh so you know lots of thoughts on on a lot of things there from from Russell Honore yes all right we're going to be right back after this this is a severe weather alert from WWL Weather sponsored by Egan Insurance [Music] Agency welcome back everyone of course 9908 is the time we are in the in the heart of our hurricane Francine coverage waiting for it to make its way closer to the Louisiana coast where it's expected to make landfall sometime around lunchtime tomorrow and we are certainly getting closer as well to a new cone from the National Weather Service National Hurricane Center I should say yes that's going to come down in about 50 minutes and we should be able to maybe narrow down a little bit more precisely where this thing is exactly headed but we know that this is going to have wide ranging impacts for all of our viewing area no matter where exactly the landfall happens absolutely and the National Hurricane Center was really clear about that uh they they did an interview with our chief mediologist earlier tonight basically saying just that that you know we focus on the cone we focus on that track we want to know exactly where it's going to go but hurricanes are huge and the the um impacts of them stretches you know very wide depending on the storm and so you know we can expect impacts from this storm far away from that Center of circulation far away from that eye wall of the storm and the actual landfalling part of the hurricane so something to pay attention to as we move through the next day and right now Francine is a category one however everyone is said to be prepared for Category 2 just because you can never really be too prepared for something like this this coming our way abut absolutely the largest recommendation is that people are to shelter in place because the city can in theory handle something like this uh but there are areas that are under mandatory evacuations and emergency orders at this hour uh many of them outside the levy Protection Systems but those emergency declarations are everywhere from Orleans Parish down to plans and Beyond so this is definitely an emergent situation and that's why we're joining you live tonight with this extended coverage we do want to get the latest on the forecast though from chief meteorologist Chris Franklin standing by you know before the last National Hurricane Center update came out uh the hurricane Hunters were flying around we got it pretty early do you think that's going to happen again uh well this one will be a new data so we'll get new coordinates new pressure new everything else but also a new track it's possible if the hurricane Hunters have kind of completed their mission the data has been entered into the models we already have the output uh that we could possibly get that information even before 10:00 and we tend to see with maybe sometimes a little bit more confidence uh in that forecast the Hurricane Center will go ahead and kind of send out that data a little bit um ahead of the the normal time which would be 10 o'cl so maybe we will get a little bit before so all we can do right now is kind of best guess what the Hurricane Center is going to do one thing to note is that the area of thunderstorms you kind of look at the White Cloud tops these are the cloud tops actually looking almost a way of seeing things in three dimensions so these are the colder Cloud tops because they are higher in the atmosphere so these are the more intense storms and while they had been kind of developing around that Center notice how they're kind of all over the place this storm has struggled dry air has really played a huge role let me go back here in the structure of the storm now with regards to the motion I also plotted on here the 400 PM forecasted track just looking at the center line and what you watch is the center of the storm is basically following right along with what the Hurricane Center said it would be going as of 4:00 so I don't think we're going to really see a change in the forecasted track might have seen a little bit of a jog to the east although when you look at the models with regards to the uh cone itself it still Falls basically right in the center so I don't think mainly because the storm is kind of following with what they thought it would do at 4:00 thus far over the last several hours I don't think we're going to see a change in the track so let's kind of look at the structure of the storm and see if maybe they think it's intensifying fast or not and it really has been looking like not right now that little area of convection kind of firing up right here is really a part of more of a broad area of thunderstorms let's see is that the center of the storm no it's down here so the center is kind of moving out this way the stronger storms though are out on the western side it may still be that drier air kind of wrapping around now what you do also see is that kind of well-defined almost eye structure that looks like it's kind of broadening out a little bit one thing I was pointing out was what had been earlier a very large broad kind of eye concentric structure of rain wrapping around a very large uh large base of kind of a large area of low pressure that did seem over the last several hours to kind of tighten up a bit it looks like it's right about there now and that is about where the new center will be as of around the 10:00 advisory moving to the new uh certainly moving toward the Northeast but as far as the structure of that goes it definitely looks like it's not as impressive as it was earlier so I don't think kind of trying to guess with what the Hurricane Center is going to say at 10:00 I don't think we're going to see an increase in the strength they'll probably maintain it at 75 M an hour motion Northeast maybe a little bit faster than 10 m an hour and I also don't think we're going to see a change in the track we'll see if maybe there's an adjustment with the intensity at landfall still most likely a category one but just exactly how strong of a one at landfall as well as the timing I don't think that's going to really change either too much one thing we have been watching to try and get a good estimate of the wind field thus far with the storm is this buoy that is just to the east it actually be more interesting if we had a buoy just to the West as well but we don't place these buoys they're anchored in so they are remaining station Ary but one that is very close to the center of the storm even with Winds of 75 mph at the center just to the east the winds are only just barely at that of a tropical storm with stronger wind gusts up to 60 M an hour hopefully what we see is kind of this structure of the Windfield very very small then we're not looking at the widespread threat of tropical storm Forest winds that being said it likely will increase if the storm is able to intensify which thus far it has really struggle to do so Wednesday midday starting through or continuing through Wednesday night that's we'll start to see the tropical storm Forest winds and at the moment we are kind of going on the high end of that forecast scale 50 to 60 mil per hour with gust 70 to 80 so just in excess of a category one hurricane with wind gusts not sustained the sustained winds at the hurricane strength would be right near the center so that's going to be a much much more narrow area what you need to do secure all of those loose items again maybe not tonight but certainly early tomorrow morning you will still have some time storm surge that and you just heard General hore mention that is one of his greatest concerns and that really does look to be more of the dramatic impact to the area with 3 to 5 foot in The Lakes again that is on the high side south facing and east facing lakes we have about four to S although the 3 to five also includes north of the Mississippi sound so along the Mississippi Gulf Coast expecting about 3 to 5 foot of a storm surge now the highest would be tabone Bay and we're anticipating about 5 to 10 foot again that is on the higher end what you need to do is you need to be at Higher Ground most properties in those areas are already built up through tomorrow into the night we're looking at that Heavy Rain threat could begin early tomorrow morning but certainly as the storm makes landfall widespread we could see four to six 4 to 6 Ines of rain and then isolated higher amounts and definitely more within the path of the storm make sure you avoid those flooded roads you just don't know how deep it is you don't know where you're going to a pothole or a divot sometimes you can't tell where some of our canals begin and end so just a good idea tomorrow especially through the afternoon and evening to just stay put and hang there until Thursday morning winds will start picking up throughout the day we are looking at the likelihood of 15 to maybe 30 m an hour during the afternoon and evening 45 to 50 m an hour at the peak with some gusting over 70 M an hour quickly though by the latter part of the night and into early Thursday morning winds while still Breezy during the day already coming below the criteria for energy Crews to start going out and making repair so that duration of the strongest winds where there the um energy Crews the um Power Crews would need to be kind of kept in place that won't last for very long hopefully after not long after midnight Crews will be able to start going out assessing the damage and making those repairs because we know if doesn't take much to get the power outages here as far as rainfall totals this one is always a little bit more of a difficult forecast we're looking at kind of a widespread estimate of four plus inches of rainfall and obviously we're going to be watching for kind of that band where we see some of the heavier totals but we'll have to consider the dry air moving in could really reduce the extent and accumulation numbers that we're anticipating as of right now what tends to be a little bit more straightforward and forecasting is the storm surge and again we're looking at usually the highest levels now this is kind of the best estimate for the height above ground level and generally the focus has been across more tabone St Mary Parish with the 6 foot storm surge and then elsewhere we've generally been looking at 1 to three in the highest uh kind of possibilities of those numbers 3 to five in the areas highlighted in yellow so that is getting into the lake and again that is getting into the lake so it floods into the River Parish it's hopefully Cor Engineers will have that structure to stop that from happening fairly soon I think maybe next year the year after that but that water starts fall flowing into the River Parishes because once it moves into Lake pona train it hits the levies in Orleans and Jefferson and has to make its way toward kind of the spillway and Beyond through the River Parishes also Northshore St tamon and Tango Parish along the Mississippi sound and generally from the uh mouth of the River East and up toward the buuy marsh for the mouth of the River West toward Grand 4 to 7 and then arone Bay Vermillion Bay expecting around 5 to 10 again at the very most we'll also be watching with the storm making landfall and even just ahead the northeastern quadrant will be where we have a threat for tornado so the lowend slight risk of severe weather is mainly from some of these brief weak tornadoes that are easily uh kind of Spun up from these landfalling hurricanes I mean we see them with tropical storms all the time so this is a very common occurrence what will begin that quick forward speed or that increase in forward speed is this this is an upper trough that we see deepening over Central Texas as it moves a little bit closer to the Texas coast it will start to push the storm along at a much faster uh speed so we will begin overnight tonight seeing that forward speed which is only at 10 m an hour begin to increase and that forward speed should remain high throughout landfall and Beyond with that upper troughing and what we already have present over the northern Gulf Coast is strong wind shear as well which is why we've been saying the Gulf of Mexico the the somewhat more hospitable environment that window was going to be closing fairly quickly and I will say that window doesn't have a whole lot more time to stay open by early tomorrow and this is 4:30 but really by early tomorrow morning it will start to encounter that wind shear and start possibly weakening the storm if it is through the night tonight somehow able to strengthen a bit it might hold on to that strength before a landfall if not if it kind of remains the way it has been I don't think it's going to last too much longer Beyond landfall let alone once it is well Inland which is all good news and hopefully that is a trend that continues we're also going to be watching this dry air it seems at the moment to have kind of tapped into a little pocket of some moisture but also some kind of atmospheric analyses of the storm have found other little pockets of dry air that may be what kind of helping to kind of weaken the storm once again as far as the impacts to us with that dry air wrapping around as it comes around on the back side by later in the afternoon and evening that may help to start immediately eroding away a lot of that heavier rainfall to where Maybe by Wednesday night and going into Thursday certainly a lot of that rainfall starts wrapping up if that is the case then we might only have a much smaller window for some of the heavier rainfall totals and that would immediately decrease some of those higher amounts of 4 to six really I think the flooding is kind of secondary the storm surge and the possibility of those strong winds across the area we'll have to see what happens as we move through this tomorrow thank you so much Chris for your Insight now of this happens one of the things that we always talk about is power outages and unfortunately we have been seeing some power outages in random neighborhoods throughout the evening uh I don't know if it's related to the rainfall that we've been seeing or what the cause is the lights were off and then back on in the Seventh Ward and desire and near St Rock that's has that has been settled and now if you take a look at the map here this is all of lower leit this is about all lower 375 customers I believe and Katie you found out the reason for this yes I spoke with the je Jefferson Paris official who said that a car hit a utility pole and knocked out power to that entire area so that's one of the areas I believe that's under a mandatory evacuation order right now or um highly suggested that people evacuate um you know the parish president was saying that during her news conference earlier today uh because you know this is an area that tends to flood and is vulnerable and so that may be an area where there aren't a whole lot of people at this hour hopefully um but apparently Entergy is on the way to try and get the power back on and that would be lovely to have it back on before any potential re outages tomorrow once the hurricane moves through yes yes um we are going to check in with Alyssa Alyssa was out at the previous power outages that were in the Marin area earlier um this is not really giving people a whole lot of confidence before we move into this storm situation tomorrow Alyssa not at all I tweeted a video we've been to a few locations um where we saw on the Entergy New Orleans power outage map that were uh without power we were in The Marin Bywater area earlier we're in the Seventh Ward right now and I was tweeting out some videos just showing hey the storm hasn't even made landfall and we're already out of power and I was getting some responses of saying this is not good I have kids at home we're trying to prepare for the hurricane how can we prepare for what's coming if we don't have power so a lot of people are frustrated again the storm has not even made landfall and we're already seeing some power outages right now I'm on St Anthony Street and we were about to come to you and say hey the power is out but as we were setting up the camera the good thing is that the lights flicker back on so most of these houses seem to have power again the street lights are back on I'm seeing maybe one or two houses here and there throughout the neighborhood that may not be without power so I would say if um you or someone you know doesn't have power right now bear with us um it seems to be that enter g New Orleans is trying to get them back on as quickly as possible again earlier I was in the Marin and byw waterer and the same exact thing happened we were about to set up to come to you guys live from the area and as soon as we turned the camera on I looked up and I was like oh more light which is great for you guys at home um so that that is good news that it seems to be that the power is slowly coming back on um we're not sure exactly why this has happened we've reached out to entg New Orleans or saying that they're going to get back to us as soon as they can with an answer um but the good news is that most of these houses um at least in this area right now seem to be um back on with power which is great we want you guys um to be able to prepare and without the power I know it's hard to do that so good news at least in this area where I'm at right now in St Anthony Street in the Seventh Ward as well as uh the Bywater area was on Royal Street earlier good news for them over there as well um a lot of things happening um in New Orleans as we prepare for landfall Francine um again not only entery New Orleans but the city as a whole is working uh to prepare the city earlier today marant trell uh signed an emergency declaration for the storm now that means that all the city resources um can go towards uh preparing for the hurricane as well as aftermath um so all the city services n OPD and uh New Orleans fire department sewage and water board DPW everyone can kind of focus on that now um so amican did sign that emergency declaration a little bit ago now um but again all over New Orleans people are uh some sandback distribution earlier seem to be quite calm though which is good we want you guys to be calm I know the power outage doesn't help that calm um and steady kind of presence but again the seems to be coming back on but again just prepare Don't Panic be safe um do what you can do early if you can get everything done tonight until Tom morning don't wait seems like we might be having some technical issues with Alyssa there she has made contact with every single major agency in the City of New Orleans today we heard her speaking with the seron water board earlier she's also dealing with some Entergy things um but I do want to ask we kind of talked about this a little bit earlier but where the pump situation is in New Orleans in in your expert opinion how are we doing what can p can you paint the picture of how ready we are I mean I think we're as ready as we can be gasan Corban and the entg powered and pumping dashboard says that we have um 91 90 of 99 major pumps operational and available so that's a good sign um when you you know kind of drill down on where those are it's my understanding that we had one of them that was out at the six um the pumping station six which Services both Orleans and Jefferson Parish it's one of those major pumping stations uh kind of near the 17th Street Canal um and uh that area of course again Services part of both parishes which makes it one of the more important um cogs in the wheel of the system um um so they've brought in temporary pumps from my from what I understand in order to kind of compensate for the fact that that one's down but you know it seems like that they're doing pretty well we'll have to wait and see you know what happens when the storm comes through and how much rain we get you know that's really key this really has nothing to do with the coastal flooding it has to do with how much rain and how fast it comes down yeah that the wait and see is the hard part because we aren't sure yet exactly how much we're going to get we won't know until it happens so we just have to kind of hope that what we have and all the backup power that is there works properly and is enough yes the power Situation's great they're looking good they've got those two turbines you know who knows if they're going to continue operating when we go through the storm things always uh can happen but right now you know they need 44 megaw of power to run the drainage system at capacity all at the same time [Music] [Applause] [Music] so we are seeing these different power outages pop up in the neighborhoods um this is in St tamy Parish with Cleo as Alysa just mentioned there have been several spots in New Orleans that have lost power tonight and then lower lefit all without power in Jefferson Parish that one may be a different situation because a car hit a power pole um but that area is supposed to be under an evacuation order right now so it'll be interesting to find out what more uh there is to that story as this day plays out yeah and what more they if they can get the power back on before anything gets worse right before the hurricane comes we're going to have more coverage for you right after this this is a severe weather alert from WWL Weather sponsored by Egan Insurance Agency welcome back everybody it's almost 9:30 it is Tuesday night we are giving you Contin coverage of hurricane Francine as it continues to churn in the Gulf off the coast of Louisiana yeah we've been talking about this all day long and kind of tightening up the timeline as well as the cones to kind of figure out where exactly this is going to hit and what the impacts might be the moral of the story is if you haven't already done it time is pretty much out yes you need to make all of the preparations that you need to make those need to be done now if you can I know it's nighttime it's dark outside couldn't hurt to just run out there and get some stuff done if it's safe to do so yeah we have already seen some rain in some of the areas of of all the parishes that we cover some wind picking up um but so far nothing too extreme right um we are again seeing some power outages however entg New Orleans Cleo many different places reporting sporadic power outages in in various neighborhoods um one of them being lower leit we hear in Jefferson Parish a car hit a power pole all of lower leit which is about 300 plus customers 375 yeah all do not have power at this hour so that is not a good sign leading into a storm when we're about to have a hurricane hit yeah that area is under a mandatory evacuation so while it is 375 customers we're not exactly sure how many people are actually in their homes there um or what Entergy could maybe do to fix the power pole before morning yeah um we'll see I've been looking at the Cleo map because there are some outages in Slidel those don't have um reasons listed there's no causes they'll say causes unknown um and they're they're generally fairly small but still when you're preparing the night before a hurricane having power to be able to make those last minute preparations really helps and it's not exactly a confidence booster going into a storm to know that the power's already out before the winds have picked up before you've seen that real inundation of rainfall possibly storm surge in some areas so it is a little bit unnerving to have that happening uh at 9:30 before a storm makes landfall in less than 12 hours less than 12 hours yeah so we're going to head over to uh chief meteorologist Chris Franklin who has been watching this uh for the last I don't know week two weeks two weeks but we are you are National Hurricane Center's coming up soon to have the new cone new update half an hour don't have that yet so hopefully we'll get that soon but I say we've been watching this for the last two weeks would it really incredible I'm going back in time to Mid August some of our long range models had hinted at an area in the central Atlantic for likely development we saw a wave kind of right on time coming off of Africa late August that rolled through the area where everything indicated we would see development never happened that little wave continued through the Caribbean never saw anything happen it got toward the Yucatan nothing got into the Bay of cichi and that's when we started to see the activities start to U start to pick up so this is an African wave we have to go back about two weeks from when it first emerged off of the coast so this is in fact one of those waves it just took a kind of odd route toward us we mentioned how often we tend to see storms that are coming at us from the southeast not all but more frequently it tends to be but this is actually an African wave that kind of took the long way around to come back up toward Louisiana I wanted to just kind of update what we have going on at the moment shower activity has been a little bit more confined at least the last hour in terms of moderate heavy rain right along the coastline we've got some showers passing through gallano leeville down to port fuson and grandal so far all manageable widening out radar though you can already star to start to see now these are The Radars out of Houston uh we have kind of it's a more of our Gulf Coast radar Network so it's from uh Houston Fort pulk uh we have the uh Hammond radar uh mobile and we're already starting to pick up on the Houston radar we can clearly see it though from our Bowmont right now I have to kind of put that in our list of Radars to start getting the uh lowlevel of the single sight radar returns but you can kind of see what the structure of that Center is trying to do or where it's trying to show up now as it's starting to move almost within our uh uh uh Houston radar there may be a period here where it's kind of with with uh outside of radar range radar range we might kind of start to lose that structure because that really is more telling with the structure of the center of the storm and what it may be trying to do one thing that has really helped us out with regards to figuring out what the storm has been doing with intensity is it trying to or oh here we go this is the 10:00 advisory so ladies you were asking me all right so this is the first time I'm seeing it so kind of bear with me as we look through the numbers uh winds remain the same at 75 M an hour change pressure came down slightly or it stayed the same uh I can't remember the pressure at the 7:00 advisory but if it did come down it only came down by maybe 1 millibar and it certainly doesn't look any better organized so as I said no big surprise it still has Winds of 75 M an hour so it's still a category one what we had been watching is that kind of clear uh circulation and kind of what looks to be almost a broad eye structure not nearly as impressive as it was earlier so we'll see if it's able to maintain any thring at least as of the 7:00 advisory strengthening has not increased it's not intensifying it's kind of holding steady so let's take a look at the new cone nothing really has changed at all landfall still looks to be about the same kind of late afternoon evening and still o I don't want to say only still as a category one so we are not expecting any real rapid intensification that looks to be almost off the table though the Hurricane Center is still maintaining it will get some strength but note as it heads towards 7: a.m. tomorrow so through the overnight and for our 7:00 advisory Hurricane Center thinks at some point during the night and early tomorrow it will gain some strength and have winds of 90 M an hour after that happens it kind of holds holds the storm steady right to the point of landfall now in between maybe there is some slight strengthening but as it gets closer to the coastline that window of strengthening quickly closes and it'll be moving into a very hostile environment right along the Shor line so at the moment looks like there were no major changes to the forecasted track so this is just coming in now and uh youall were asking if they might possibly uh do this early and sure enough they did I guess they had enough information put into the models uh from the hurricane Hunters the models were already um kind of sending out the data we already had that data in and so now we do have the uh 10:00 advisory no major changes doesn't look like any real shift in the forecasted uh cone again we find New Orleans on the kind of extreme Eastern uh part of the of the cone itself so doesn't really look like it has shifted at all I kind of using Marsh Island as my um gauge here to see if we do see any shifts almost looks like maybe a little West maybe but U it's it's hard to say and again as um Jamie Rome with the Hurricane Center was even telling us don't Focus solely on that Center Line I like to focus on the center line one because it gives us an idea of what the Hurricane Center is thinking and two you want to avoid the center of the storm obviously what the Hurricane Center is trying to uh get across is the fact that impacts going to be felt over a large they just want the population aware of the threats of a storm I like to though talk about the more extreme threats are going to be right near the center of the storm and as a matter of fact you kind of look at what the models had done and this is obviously within the new cone uh still looks like the models have might have shifted a little bit east and then the hurricane hunter or the Hurricane Center excuse me really didn't change their thinking so you know sometimes there are these little jogs with the models one way or the other but I even said with the fact that from the 4:00 4ast casted uh uh cone it looked like the storm since 400 p.m. has basically been following along with exactly what the Hurricane Center was saying it may not be buying into this little model shift is if this is even a shift at all and so I think the Hurricane Center was like we're going to hold off we'll see what happens through the overnight with the center of the storm see if it does anything different then maybe we'll make some adjustments but as of right now you're getting into a window where the uh margin of error is tightening up so we're starting to get a much better picture of precisely where it should be making landfall and that's basically what they were saying as of the 4:00 advisor so if you are just joining us now we did get in the 10:00 advisory no increase in strength there might have been and Alexa I don't know if you can look back at the 7:00 to see if the pressure or what the pressure was it's at 980 right now just curious if it dropped at all because I cannot remember for the life of me if it was at 7even if it was at 980 uh as of the 7:00 advisory it was at 982 okay so it did come down by 2 mbar so the pressure continues to lower but as far as finding any stronger winds it looks like that has kind of been capped off for now we'll see again what happens during the overnight thus far even as the pressure had been steadily dropping yesterday and today it was still at a tropical storm then at 7:00 became a hurricane saw the pressure lower again but the winds have kind of maxed out so we will see the wind speed has been not really doing much of anything going back to yesterday so we'll see if it's a able to get up to 90 mph we do have some 90 mph wind gusts but as we had mentioned showing you that buoy uh that is just east of the storm itself actually now just to the southeast of the storm itself you're not seeing winds gusting up to 90 M an hour that gusting at that boy up to only 54 miles an hour and sustained just above a tropical storm so this Windfield remains fairly small again we'll see if uh it's able to kind of increase and we're expecting the kind of increase in size as it does approach the coast but there is not a whole lot more time before the center of that storm is moving toward Morgan City and the South Central Louisiana Coastline there is not a great deal more time for this to continue to intensify and thus far we have seen it not really intensifying at all let alone quickly and certainly not rapidly that doesn't look to be the case with this at all as conditions will become more and more hostile for further Organization for further development for further strengthening one thing we'll be watching though is kind of that center of the storm through through the late night hours then we'll be here during the overnight kind of changing hands with the morning crew during the uh after midnight hour and we'll be watching kind of the structure of the storm see what it does through the night and then I would say at some point uh probably before or around the noon hour as it's nearing the coast the structure may start to then deteriorate as it moves into the more hostile environment so once again the 10:00 advisory is in Winds of 75 mph still that forward speed at 10 mph hopefully will start to see that pick up uh during the overnight period and then pressure currently holding at uh or at Fallen to 980 as far as the forecast track has uh uh come in there really is no change in thinking it does look like it'll be sometime midday afternoon late or afternoon early evening on Wednesday again folks have been saying well that time keeps changing it's gone from 1 to 7 it always looked to be somewhere in that kind of midafternoon early evening time frame and that really had has not changed quickly moving up toward the north so as we get further into our late Wednesday night overnight then early Thursday morning by 7:00 a.m. the folks are going to bed Wednesday and waking up Thursday the center of the storm is now tropical storm and is already almost up toward Jackson Mississippi and that was one thing Jamie Rome was pointing out all those Inland warnings it just tries to give you a better idea of how far north those tropical storm Forest hurricane Forest winds can make it pre prior all other Seasons they really only focus on coastal areas with regards to Tropical Storm force winds hurricane winds now they're trying to emphasize the Inland dangers from those winds as well as all of the other impacts that can follow with these landfalling storms a lot of times you get far more significant flooding and deaths from water and flooding Inland than you ever do right along the coastline with the storm making landfall sometimes they're able to interact with some mid- latitude systems and you really get some big rainfall uh events that tends to be what happens and one of the reasons why Hurricane Center is really trying to work at emphasizing the dangers with these storms as they move farther Inland but for us once we get toward Thursday morning we are then kind of again counterclockwise we're on the backside and drier air will continue to rotate around really helping us out in terms of the rainfall starting to immediately Abate so again nothing has changed we're looking at from tomorrow midday through the night the strong winds at times we could see hurricane even force wind gusts not sustained but wind gusts in the metro area again we'll kind of watch that Trend secure loose items again you'd have a little bit of time later tonight or through the night tonight and into early tomorrow then as we head into tomorrow through the day the storm surge at least what we have going for us is by the afternoon we're expecting most of our storm surge Heights to be reached we should be at low tide so we'll have kind of the storm surge coming in but at least the tide coming out they're not going to counteract each other but but it does help us out with maybe a foot or two I'm not sure what the tide range is but it does help us out a little bit so what you need to do is get to Higher Ground and throughout the day and night tomorrow probably around midday but likely starting even in the morning the rainfall rolling in as the storm we kind of get those waves of the Bands pushing through we will start to see more of the four to six possible isolated higher amounts just make certain you don't drive through flooded Waters or flooded uh roadways that is why we've been saying once you get to midday tomorrow just stay indoors hang out until Thursday morning when we kind of get the all clear that certain areas are able to be access and again I don't think that's going to be widespread issues with areas closed but certainly what we know more of our vulnerable areas down near the coast metro area Northshore I think we're going to be just fine much of the River Parishes as well I think we're going to be just fine those winds start picking up later in the midday and afternoon and peaking probably kind of late afternoon evening as the storm is pushing North norward obviously your strongest winds are going to be right near the center but we could see winds sustained over 50 mph that's going to do some damage and then winds gusting up 70 plus miles an hour in the city certainly very possible late in the night still Breezy but winds diminishing and immediately dropping below the criteria for uh electric the power companies Entergy in particular to start going out and making those needed repairs which we know we'll probably see so this is the qpf forecast the quantitative precipitation forecast and we're looking at rainfall totals again kind of in a band from where about we're expecting Francine to make Inland uh to make landfall and then continue Inland throughout the better part of the day tomorrow and then again quickly moving out storm surge potential we've been highlighting these risk areas generally from tabone Bay toward um Vermilion Bay and then as far as the highest totals we're anticipating 3 to 5 feet in the lake and along our coastlines for to set well from the mouth of the River East toward the chandeler uh chandeler sound and Mississippi sound and then for bar ter Bay 4 to7 tabone and out toward Vermillion looking at about 5 to 10 also we'll be watching for tomorrow again not looking at a huge issue with the storm threat with tornadoes but there will be a threat for tornado sometimes folks like wait wait I thought we were talking about a hurricane not also tornadoes they tend to be very brief week usually ef0 maybe ef1 they typically are maybe just a little bit stronger than what some of the wind gusts will be as they move through the region that will be something that at one point we'll have countless little warnings being issued with during the course of the storm making landfall and pushing on land they tend to be more in in the middle of some of the stronger wind gusts and sometimes it's hard to even differentiate if you do get a little bit of damage whether it was from some of the uh hurricane force wind gusts or from some of these smaller tornadoes just know that we'll probably have a watch issued at some point and may see several warnings from kind of radar indicating a little bit of rotation within those thunderstorms so to kind of recap what we're looking at we did get the 10:00 advisory really no changes it is still a hurricane with winds uh maintained at 75 mph no change in thinking looking at landfall sometime afternoon early evening on Wednesday as a category one it looks almost like that possibility of a two we always talk about you know prepare for the possibility of a category stronger uh that with that window kind of quickly closing that doesn't look to be as much of an a potential through the overnight just watching the trend of what uh francen has been doing going back to yesterday it has really been struggling with regards to that dry air and it looks like that is not going anywhere anytime soon and then as it nears the coast of Louisiana conditions become more hostile so I don't believe we're going to see a category two at landfall so it looks like a one and still nothing that uh can be taken lightly it will do some damage and we will see some widespread power outages just again this is not Ida this is not going to be a monster of a hurricane uh before or at landfall tomorrow morning or tomorrow midday Chris of course Chris can you hear me yes of course we have some questions of of course us have questions never me what no one I never have as long as they're useful right all right you first um a couple of things so when we look at those spaghetti plots and we see that they've moved a little bit to the east you know each one of those is a different model run um and you mentioned many times that some of those are better than others at forecasting tropical weather the ones that are better at forecasting tropical weather what are they saying are they close to what the National Hurricane Center is saying yes so let me show you um instead of just the spaghetti plot because again what we do here and it's very interesting I was actually putting together a presentation for a career day talk at Brother Martin which they've canceled but I kind of wanted to talk about some of the products that you see us using on air 15 years ago the spaghetti plot the term invest we're kind of inhouse for meteorologists to kind of discuss uh modeling Trends forecast what we're looking at and then as the internet got bigger these products kind of became more public and mainstream and so then we've had to kind of explain better how best to use this data for the public we show you the spaghetti plot and kind of like what we were talking about with the cone we're only looking at what the center of the storm is going to do so we're only looking at that individual point so I'd rather show you what some of the larger models the GFS the Euro which it kind of shows the entire storm itself so taking a look at the GFS this is one of the global models that we use a little bit more frequently because it actually the GFS has been doing a much better job especially this season so what we're looking at is maybe a slight difference with regards to where the Hurricane Center is saying the center would be at about 3:30 tomorrow afternoon but really the GFS is pretty close on with what the Hurricane Center is saying now again what we've been looking at was this with the heaviest rainfall if we do start getting that dry air kind of wrapping around we would see a lot of that kind of get heavy rainfall shifted more to the north and off to the West so the GFS and this is the latest GFS run is basically exactly what the National Hurricane Center is saying let's take a look at the euro to see if it is saying about the same thing the Euro here we go kind of put this into motion we're looking at the same kind of track toward maybe more ver million Bay a Euro maybe a little bit stronger and a little bit more to the southwest of what the Hurricane Center is saying but keep in mind it's probably all within the cone so this is all within the realm of possibilities it again could kind of shift back to the west but also indicating more of the heavy rainfall threat more to the north and west of the storm so these models we were looking at and I know we had some confusion we had a few models that uh use what we call our Precision cast it's kind of our in-house IBM is actually the parent company of our weather provider and they have a computer model but those are what we refer to as high resolution or even nested grids where they look at a very small part of the atmosphere those usually do a little bit better with what we call like our convective storms where you get the showers thunderstorms during the summertime to kind of pop up those do a much better job because that is over a smaller scale tropical systems are a much much larger scale we have to be able to sample a large area to get an idea of what is happening in a storm and we have to be able to sample kind of the surrounding atmosphere so we have to be able to sample that upper trough Over Texas we have to better sample the dry air moving in we have to better sample that upper high that is out to the southwest of it so that's why we use the global models for forecasting anything in the tropics because these are much larger scale kind of what we call synoptic scale systems on the larger side we use the GFS the Euro and there are others that we um use not necessarily on air but kind of to give us a little bit of an idea with our forecasting skill and then for the kind of more thunderstorms we see pop up that's when we tend to use what we call the high resolution models those the her that we have mentioned also our IBM model the graph IBM Precision cast whatever you want to call it uh those tend not to be as good with tropical systems and thankfully what we're looking at is a bit more agreement with the GFS and the Euro with about the same timing about the same location and landfall and about the same structure of the storm notice how it has this little Notch right here at 3:00 in the afternoon that would be all the dry air we'll have to see just how much in terms of the heavier rain we're able to get on the Eastern side the dirtier side of the storm because it really looks like the heaviest of the rainfall is going to be right near the center all right I've got the next question for you okay now that we've had two consistent cones because the last update we got was very similar to this and The Cone overall did not shift now that we've got two consistent con in a row does that mean anything in terms of maybe we'll wake up tomorrow and this won't have changed or is it still open the possibility that we'll wake up and there'll be a different con there is I would say in meteorology you can never say with 100% certainty ever and that's always the running joke that's why we can never be wrong cuz we just never give it 100% but with that said I think we're pretty much locked in we will see through the overnight if the storm path continues kind of along that Northeastern trajectory one thing I've been I I'd been mentioning even going back to yesterday night once we saw that kind of turn remember yesterday it was moving more Northwest North North West and then we were kind of waiting for a little bit of a turn what it's doing is it's following along the upper high that is down to the Southwest as well as that deepening upper trough it's basically squeezing uh being squeezed now in between two disturbances and as that forward speed eventually starts the increase which we're expecting I don't foresee any more dramatic shifts in the forecast model I think we're pretty much locked on for where it's going to make landfall but again and even as Jamie Rome said don't Focus too too much on that Center Line because there are going to be little wobbles that the hurricane models just cannot um figure out and something that was interesting with Ida was those little wobbles 20 or 40 miles would have meant a huge difference between the impacts to New Orleans or what we and and what we could have seen along our hurricane uh risk reduction system really test that system or what we actually saw one thing that Ken Graham who was at the time head of the National Hurricane Center said is those little wobbles are very much within the uh margin of error of a computer model the forecast of that Center Line 20 miles one way or the other is a very good forecast it's almost impossible to figure out if it's going to be right at that center line or 20 to 30 miles on either side of it so I think we're pretty much locked in with the landfall and thankfully we have seen kind of a trend we look for Trends to see if they continue we've seen a trend with not much of a change in the track and that even goes back to the 10: a.m. and we haven't really seen much in the way of a change to the time of when this will make landfall tomorrow know I'm pretty sure the joke was it's the only job where you can keep your job and be wrong 50% of the time the thing is 50% would be a lot time to bring that up 50% is a lot 75% maybe but 50 it is but in all serious all kidding aside we think you're doing a fantastic job and we are very confident in your forecast you're very good at what you do uh but something else that I was wondering about but here we go but you can tell we're getting a little delirious here folks we are a little bit but so when we look at the speed that this thing is moving has that changed at all we see you know Northeast at 10 is its movement uh the timing of this thing did that change when we got this latest forecast it really didn't it it it what what is sometimes kind of troubling with the the forecast from the Hurricane Center is its forecast points are every 12 hours so you're only getting kind of 12h hour points here at its forecast so sometimes they even have to mention in their discussion sometimes you have to kind of dig into the weeds to find all the details because there have been times where they might have this as a cat one at one point cat one at this point but in between they're expecting that maybe it strengthens I'm not saying it is but there actually had been that time earlier in the day where it was going to be a category one at one of the forecast points 12 hours later just after landfall a category 1 and so looking at the just raw data I said okay well it's not going to strengthen at all in their discussion they mentioned well in between these times there is the potential that we could see it kind of briefly ramp up to a two so that's what sometimes is a little bit more misleading with these specific forecast points again with the cone and the it's kind of a a range area that we're looking at at this point they're expecting it to be at around 7:00 but really the timing for landfall has not changed it's always been somewhere in kind of the afternoon to early evening and I know that's kind of a six-h hour window but we are starting to see that kind of narrow down so it does look like it'll certainly be after the noon hour and likely before 700 p.m. tomorrow night yeah cuz I I thought it was going to be around 100 p.m. so that that that was again kind of one of the early forecast points that was right near the coast and it was saying one it did again while and it may be one thing that may have slowed it down a little bit is perhaps the track was expecting or the forecasted uh um speed was expecting that the storm would have already been moving a little bit faster since it's still only moving at 10 that may have slowed things down by a few hours so that may be what it's uh kind of the change in thinking with the timing slightly again I would always I would never mark it down with these forecasts that this is the exact time it's going to make landfall as a matter of fact when I was I was showing you the uh models from the the GFS and the Euro uh the GFS in particular when we kind of time this out a little bit here we go at you know 5:00 so that's about landfall so Euro or EXC me the GFS maybe still a little bit offshore 5:00 it could be just near the coastline so that kind of again Falls within that 1 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. window at when we would likely see it making landfall and did that also change when it's going to move out of here a little bit so so kind of fast forwarding this a little bit in time you know we're looking at it Crossing into Southwestern Mississippi uh maybe well I can kind of back it up a little bit because that would be well into Southwest Mississippi maybe kind of crossing the state line at around 1: to 2 a.m. but notice it does move through very quickly so it could still cross into Mississippi as a category one obviously a much weaker one at that point but it's still possible because it's going to be moving so quick through the state again remember if it makes a landfall at around 7 8 9 10 11 12 you know 1 2 we're not looking at a lot of time through Southeast Louisiana so the speed at which [Music] [Music] Press thank you so much for your Insight I mean this has been fantastic just to be able to kind of break that down with him yeah really get into the nitty-gritty of things I'll explain what Doom scrolling means later okay well we'll be right back right after the short break with more coverage this is a severe weather alert from WWL Weather sponsored by Egan Insurance Agency [Music] all right welcome back this is a live look at South Padre Island Texas as we await hurricane Francine she is on her way to us through the gulf and you can see that there's some waves there nothing too extreme but definitely some rough water out there yeah of course Francine kind of positioned out near South Padre Island that's why we're taking a look in Texas uh the hurricane is just hanging out in the Gulf essentially uh building strength a little bit we did see a new update from the national Hurricane Center a little earlier than their 10:00 expected time frame so we were able to get you know a first look at that with our chief meteorologist just a little bit ago so uh you know we have an indication now that this track may be solidifying we may be getting a better idea about timing when this thing is expected to make its way on Shore what we do know for sure is that it is coming to South Louisiana and that we will feel some impacts of it tomorrow that's why we're on tonight state of emergency is declared in many parts of our our viewing area and the Metro New Orleans area and so we want to keep you up to date with the very latest on this storm as things stand right now hurricane Francine is forecasted to hit as a category one storm um right uh right right kind of in between Lafayette and and New Orleans we know that tabone parish is on high alert tonight um and right around dinner time is now what we're learning right about 5:00 so yes absolutely uh that's approximately when we should expect it to make landfall and then make its way in Chris is saying that it's going to be moving out pretty quickly yeah and that's good news because this is expected to bring some rain I know that we're anticipating some possible Street flooding some possible flooding so um we're going to go right now to chief meteorologist Chris Franklin to kind of break things down even further hey Chris yeah we got the 10:00 advisory and no big surprises one thing that we didn't want to see of anything is that we would like to see that forward Speed pickup still moving at 10 miles an hour so kind of painfully slow but the upper trough that we're waiting for is still more over Central Texas as it moves toward East Texas and the Gulf Coast that is going to be the feature that really starts to pick up that forward speed and that is still anticipated it's not something we're really waiting for it is there we're just waiting for it to get a little bit closer toward the storm that's when we'll start to see that forward motion pick up so hopefully by the 1:00 advisory we will see that forward motion having increased and then continuing to increase right over the point of landfall again maybe later in the afternoon or evening tomorrow so the winds are made the same 40 7 75 M an hour the pressure did drop a little bit but we had seen the pressure dropped steadily yesterday and early today and the winds had maintained themselves at 65 mph it was only as of the 7:00 advisory that Francine became a hurricane and now as of 10 it's kind of held that strength we're going to be watching closely satellite and radar data as well as getting the information from the hurricane Hunters but I'll tell you what you really get a good radar fix with the current position and structure of the storm with the uh with the radar now we're starting to move a little bit out of the range of Brownsville starting to fall within the range of uh Houston so we'll wait and see if we start to kind of fall within those Radars because it does give you a much better idea of what is happening a little bit closer to the surface and with the core of the storm cuz right now all we can do is look at where the storms are kind of blossoming up so we really need to get a little bit lower into the atmosphere and that's where the radar comes into play and what had been a little bit better of kind of a tight almost eye wall trying to develop and that is just in the radar satellite we were not seeing any kind of an eyewall structure there was no clearing out of the center nothing nothing like that but what looked to be a little bit more of a concentrated eyewall has almost started to kind of spread out a little bit radar reflectivity not nearly as impressive as it had been a little bit earlier so we will wait to see through the night again we kind of watch these Trends see what occurs and thankfully even as these little bursts of thunderstorms kind of fire up they tend to also fall apart so we've not really seen any Persistence of these storms hanging on Hurricane Center just based on the model guidance still indicating we will likely see through the night and into early tomorrow some further strengthening maybe to 90 mph winds so still a category one but still a powerful storm and then kind of maintaining that strength right up the point of landfall that again I take with a grain of salt because we will see increasing wind shear and drier air which I would think would start helping to weaken the storm right up to the point of landfall I certainly don't believe we're going to see this intensifying right up to landfall if anything it'll kind of plateau in its strength or start weakening it's either going to be one of those options I don't think we're going to see it increasing in intensity right up to landfall like we did with Ida so that is not really uh a possibility or not very likely a possibility again as as far as the timing goes yes it's been kind of a rough estimate and one reason why I think maybe it has kind of gotten a little bit later with regards to the landfall time is maybe because that forward speed should have been a little bit faster at this point and it's still kind of painfully slow at 10 miles an hour pressure as I mentioned did come down but that did not do anything to the winds as they are still moving at 75 mph basically what we're looking at is about from the time of landfall to the time it exits Louisiana into Southwestern Mississippi about 6 maybe 7 hours so that's the time it would take to move in and start moving out Ida took 30 hours so we're looking at almost a third of the time to move through this is going to be moving through very very quickly as we get into the day tomorrow model guidance indicated no real major changes they're pretty much locked on kind of Vermilion Bay maybe around Morgan City or south of Morgan City again don't follow too too much on that point because the forecast cone encompasses all the areas of where that center line or center point of the storm could be at landfall and it still is possible it could be kind of on the western side of a Vermillion Bay or maybe almost to Central or Southern uh excuse me Central or Eastern part of tabone bay so we're kind of locked in on about the point that this storm is going to make landfall early tomorrow as far as the Windfield goes it is not very big there is a buoy just to the Southwest or excuse me just to the southeast of the storm and the sustained winds are at 43 mph so only just at those of a c of tropical storm so thankfully we are not seeing very strong winds outside far outside or at least hurricane Forest winds or even those of a stronger tropical storm very far outside of the storm itself so that is all good news there and hopefully that is something that continues through the night that the Windfield doesn't get excessively big and that again is still yet to be determined how large that Windfield will get so these are our what we call weather impact alert kind of the criteria that we're looking for with regard to the impacts tropical winds those going to be a little bit more widespread beginning tomorrow midday starting down toward the coast and then moving Inland through the night and I say midday that may be a little bit more midafternoon since the timing for landfall has changed a bit we'll keep it kind of in flux right now winds at their greatest I believe would be about 50 to 60 M an hour with higher gust 70 80 mph on the high end obviously within the path of where the storm makes landfall and moves Inland they could be a little bit greater but kind of talking on the on the whole widespread make sure that any items outside you still have a little bit of time tomorrow and now with a little bit later of a landfall you might have a little bit more time early storm surge we've already seen some high water now we're also approaching high tide tonight and the good news is what will coincide with some of the highest total that we are expecting we're also anticipating is to be going toward low tide not that they are going to counteract each other we don't have tile ranges of 10 ft but a foot or so will help us out and again we're just kind of looking at the Silver Lining or what what not really Silver Lining but whatever positive we can again what you would need to do is just get to Higher Ground and certainly those are the areas that have already seen some evacuations Wednesday through the late night will be the heavy rainfall threat if that drier air though plays more of a roll maybe some of those totals are never realized and we don't see the high four to 6 Ines of rainfall winds will start picking up throughout the day tomorrow again you will have some time in the morning it'll turn a little bit Bluster blusterer blustery maybe just blustery more blustery I sometimes blusterous more blusterous oo you made that up didn't you yes okay we've been here long enough to we can make up words at this point as we continue through the evening and night this is when again probably within about 24 hours when we're looking at some of the strongest winds again less than 24 hours a storm will be making landfall and about 24 hours from now we're looking at probably kind of the peak of the storms winds and surge thankfully as we get toward 3:00 a.m. winds start to diminish they start changing direction right around sunrise on Thursday in improving conditions for the rest of the day in fact drying out through the rest of the day forecast rainfall totals this is always one of the more difficult uh impact to predict with regards to just how much we're going to see at the moment it's looking more like four maybe 6 Ines of rainfall the dry air that is going to play a huge role in just how much rainfall we see and of course as we've been mentioning there will be that band of where some of the heavier totals will occur storm surge totals above ground level we're looking at the most at about 6 feet from cadry Western tabone per uh Western tabone Bay towards rilion Bay and then elsewhere about 1 to 3T at its high 3 to 5 ft along our Eastern and Southern facing coastlines and in the lake as far as Southern facing from Grand Al to Venice so bar at teria Bay 4 to 7 and at the most from tabone to Vermilion at about 5 to 10 we'll also see a threat with the landfalling storm kind of through the night along with the Gusty winds and the heavy rainfall the threat for some isolated brief weak tornadoes moving through this is usually not a big concern because they're usually within some of the higher wind gusts so you might have tornadoes with estimated winds just a little bit above what some of the wind gusts are doing so that tends to be an issue and something we'll be watching at some point tomorrow we will see a tornado watch issued for the area what we are waiting on is this this is the upper trough that we've been talking about as this nears the coast and moves into the Gulf that is what will start pushing the storm quickly it'll be kind of stuck in between a big upper High down to the southwest and this approaching upper level trough and and that is what's going to Speed it right along and really probably won't see any other uh deviations from the track with this trough moving in it should kind of continue almost along not necessarily a straight line but rather straight line right toward the South Central Southeastern uh Louisiana Gulf Coast wind shear will start increasing as we get into the probably pre-dawn hours tomorrow and right up to the point of landfall that wind shear as well as the drier air may not really do anything to the structure of the storm per se but it will help us out if we're able to get that wind to uh that dry air to kind of wrap around and limit just how much of the heavy rainfall we see as we were looking at just before the top of the hour at the GFS and the Euro it had more of a pocket of moisture on the northern and western side due to the dri air so that likely would be where we see some of the heaviest rainfall toos kind of along and just to the west of the track of the storm elsewhere we're not looking at too much in the way of impacts through the night tonight we will get more rainfall and again starting to pick up the broad circulation out of the Houston radar eventually that's going to fall within our radar range and again that gives us a fairly good uh fix on where the center of the storm is thus far this evening and over the last couple of hours we've had more light showers and plenty of breaks in the rainfall rainfall accumulation totals have been manageable today of course that will change during the day tomorrow and then improving condition one thing I've really been trying to stress is this is not an Ida so we're not looking at the the widespread massive power outages those long durations of power outages and the massive kind of uh recovery efforts with that said we know we're going to see some areas that need to be cleaned up we know we're going to see some power outages this is not an August storm we're not dealing with 95 degree heat and 115 degree heat index it'll be in the mid low to mid 80s over the next couple of days and in fact models indicating maybe late Thursday Friday and the Saturday less humid air where it'll feel a little bit more comfortable so even if you're out of power we're not talking about extreme heat and heat advisories certainly nothing like that it's actually going to be fairly comfortable post Francine all right thanks so much Chris and we're just getting word into the channel 4 Newsroom that President Biden has approved the emergency declaration for Louisiana which is helpful in terms of getting any sort of Federal Aid into the state quickly after the storm moves through so that is good and that is just into our Newsroom tonight yeah and our Louisiana delegation had been pushing for that to be sped along earlier today to make that happen for landfall and it appears as it has yes and that all affects I believe all of the emergency declarations that we've heard from different municipalities throughout the day New Orleans is under one we've heard Jefferson St Bernard many of the areas in our viewing area are under emergency declarations for that very same reason so that it expedites the ability to get help and funding and things after the storm y very important yes um we do want to talk about some of the power outages that we're seeing briefly earlier today we did earlier this evening I should say we we did see one in Seventh Ward and the um Marin area the desire area but that went back on pretty quickly which is good news they did but there is still one out there is still an outage in lower leit that is affecting several hundred people right now yes Jefferson Parish Scott Walker council member Scott Walker confirms it is out in lower leit and apparently was caused by a car hitting a power pole um and there are about 374 customers affected by that now again it's under a mandatory evacuation order so hopefully there aren't a lot of people in that area at this hour yeah and also the Entergy website says that crews are on site right now making repairs so the hope is that they can get the lights back on so that in in time at least for some things to happen tomorrow there's also another outage over in belchase some customers without power over 100 customers over in belchase in a neighborhood there it's unclear what caused that outage I'm just kind of clicking around here equipment on the utility pole broke uh crews are on site making repairs so hopefully they'll get that that power back on uh shortly uh in in an expeditious manner it does appear as though in sidel with Cleo there are still some outages there about 185 um customers with One Outage about 65 customers just down the street uh just down Front Street that also affected in the Oldtown slide l so um some outages there as well you mentioned earlier not exactly a confidence Builder going into a stressful day tomorrow absolutely not I mean people I think are already nervous about the power grid given that we have seen so many dry weather power outages um you know throughout the spring and into the summer I mean you know people don't have a whole lot of confidence in the power system going into the storm so it's a little bit of a confidence Shaker when power's going out the night before um but entg has given many um you know indications that they feel like they're in a much better position to handle this than they were for example during Hurricane Ida we again we don't expect the storm to be a hurricane Ida the impacts are definitely not expected to be what that was so y um but we'll see if if the the things that have been done to harden the grid have actually hardened the grid enough to withstand a category one category one right so we're going to head over now um Alyssa Curtis has been following some of those power outages she was playing a little bit of whack-a-mole to find the neighborhoods uh Power was flickering back on and off which I imagine is frustrating for people Alyssa what's the latest from New Orleans yeah Katie Devon it seems like um everyone in New Orleans has been restored um so if you don't have your power back on or you know someone who doesn't have their power back on still just give it a little bit longer um it might just take a little bit longer for your specific block or your area to actually come back on but enter g New Orleans says all customers were restored right before 9900 p.m. we're getting a little bit more information from them about what exactly happened they say that it's still under investigation but initial findings show that it's likely a breaker failure um they say about 9600 customers um in the Marin ninth award neighborhoods were without power for a little bit we were like Katie said playing wack-a-mole a little bit we were driving around to the different neighborhoods um that the power outage map showed were out of power almost every single time we stopped at a location and got outside and picked the camera up it seemed like the lights flickered back on within five or so minutes so that's good news for a lot of you at home but the not so good news is that the power outage happened that you guys were without power for a little bit I got some some tweets some messages saying exactly what you guys are saying it's not necessarily a confidence booster a lot of people are saying hey we are trying to prepare for this storm the storm hasn't even made landfall and here we are without power I spoke with entg New Orleans yesterday um just in preparation from for the store asking about where the grid stands asking about their reliability and they were extremely confident they said they're in the best place that they've ever been that they should be able to handle this situation so they are confident I know a lot of residents don't feel the same way especially with tonight's power outage but tomorrow um of course we're going to play it by ear and see what happens they say that they do have extra Crews on standby with extra equipment ready to come in and assist if they need to um also keep in mind with some of the winds that we're expected to see tomorrow it might take a little bit for Entergy New Orleans to be able to get out and get their Crews up and active in uh helping restore power should power go off they need to make sure that those winds are at a certain level so that it's safe for people to go outside and get into those bucket trucks um and be able to get up and actually fix that so if you do uh go without power to your power goes off um it might not be able to be restored until it is safe for them to get outside and do what needs to be done but again entg New Orleans says they're hoping it shouldn't be a problem they're hoping that power doesn't go out um and if it does they'll be able to restore it as quickly as possible again they're just really confident um so if you do uh have your power back on just keep preparing um we've been saying it all all day all evening be safe um but don't panic but be prepared so a little bit of balancing there but I think that seems to be the consensus around the city we've been out at different sandbag locations we've been driving around and a lot of people seem to be just that in that kind of head space they're saying some people are saying we're a little bit nervous but we've been through this before and it doesn't seem like it's going to be so bad again like you guys said it shouldn't be in Ida it doesn't seem like it's going to be in Ida and that's I think the consensus of what people are telling me they got their sandbags ready um which was very important they're getting of course you've seen all all the all the tweets about getting the snacks and all all the fun stuff all the good stuff but make sure you have the Practical stuff as well um I know some people may not uh be feeling so confident right now in in the power grid um but again entg New Orleans says that they they're ready and it's all reliable um we also spoke with sewage and waterboard earlier today and they also are very confident with uh their capacity right now they say 90 of 99 pumps are available they also have enough power um for the generators and all that they need again we have to keep in mind just the capacity overall of sewage and waterboard um with that inch of rain and then just the timing of everything we should uh see some inches of rain so we will likely see some Street flooding tomorrow we're not we know this is going to happen we anytime or not anytime it rains but a lot of time that it rains some areas will get Street flooding um our our system is old we know that going to happen but sew and waterboard says if we do get to that point that it is going to be flooded they should be able to um do the necessary things to make sure that it is um the flooding goes down as soon as possible so just keep doing what you guys are doing um prepare be safe don't panic all the City Utilities seem to say that they're in a very good place and we should be getting an update tomorrow so we'll bring that to you tomorrow afternoon as well reporting live in the seventh W Alyssa Curtis WWL Louisiana now Alyssa before we let let you go you did an interview earlier today with gasan Corban the head of the SE and water board he gave you a pretty extensive update on what he's expecting and what he thinks the capacity is for the system for tomorrow you know he did mention that there are a handful of pumps that are down uh what's the level of concern that you got from him what were your takeaways I didn't necessarily get um any concern from him really he seemed confident he was very calm and collected um I know he has to be in these situations but again he says that they are again at a great capacity they said they're really at the best place that they've been in a while 90 out of 99 pumps and then that power they're they have about 70 if I believe cor if I remember correctly forgive me it has been a very long day but it was um 70 of those Hertz of power they need 45 about so they are they have a little bit of extra power should they need to um deploy those but again gasan Corban was very confident um he didn't really seem shaken at all he wasn't concerned he just said keep in mind of our normal capacity on you know what what we normally see we have Street flooding we're an old city with an old system so there is likely to be Street flooding tomorrow but he was like it shouldn't be a problem if there is Street flooding we should be able to get it down in a reasonable amount of time of course we have to wait and see we can't really give exacts he can't really give exacts um but again he seemed confident all right Alyssa thank you so much that is that I mean that's a very good very good review I guess even though we are kind of in a wait and see pattern so we'll see it's a good sign very good sign other storm preparations are happening in some of our major infrastructure of course the sew and water board is just one piece of our protection system and that is just from the drainage in the City of New Orleans it's not from the flood water that's going to uh possibly threaten the area tomorrow uh what you're looking at right now on your screen are the floodgates at the Harvey Canal being closed there's a massive Floodgate there uh that shuts off the Harvey Canal so that floodwater coming in from the Gulf cannot make its way into Jefferson Parish on the West Bank it is a key piece of the hurricane protection system it was one of those things that I believe they built after Hurricane Katrina uh in order to better secure the West Bank uh because it was a source of vulnerability it was a place where uh water from the Gulf could make its way in and so what seeing right now is the very um amazing process some of the engineering that has been done in the city since hurricane krina has been unbelievable I mean the surge protector on the inter Coastal Waterway is it looks like a castle wall I mean it it is unbelievable what Engineers have been able to do and I think that's one example of it yeah those pictures are incredible and we also saw another Floodgate live on air that was closed around 700 p.m. this evening that was down in cadry near Highway 56 um and that's where we had Lily Cummings and she's still in tabone Parish for us tonight um Lily where are you now are you still in cadry and what can you tell us about where you are hey Devon and Katie no we actually moved from cadry up the Bayou back to H here we are standing right outside of the shelter here at the Municipal Auditorium and I do want to tell you all that we stepped inside to just see how things were going they told me that around 600 people are taking shelter here tonight and we saw a large SUV with cs that were being brought in just about roughly 15 minutes ago so a lot of folks taking advantage of this shelter here and I told you all earlier that pets are allowed at the shelter if they are created and you bring your own supplies so please know that this is available to folks here in H I also want to talk about a few changes obviously throughout the day tabone has been watching things very closely because here they have to be concerned about that storm surge that's what they're watching very closely they're expecting anywhere between 5 and 10 ft so as you all saw us earlier this evening down in cadry they were closing those floodgates making sure um that everyone down in that area had evacuated so any folks that were outside of the levy protection system were asked to evacuate it was a mandatory evacuation rather and then folks that are in zone two of tabone Parish those folks were actually asked to voluntarily evacuate so a lot of moving Parts down here and they've made a lot of changes today as well so obviously they moved up the time of closing those Gates that we showed you live on air around 700 p.m. initially they thought we're just going to close them tomorrow morning Wednesday morning but they thought that the storm was coming in a little sooner than expected so they moved that up to evacuate by 600 p.m. tonight close the gates at 7:00 p.m. obviously now after our 10 p.m. update we've got a big update there that the storm is going to be now hitting this area probably closer to dinner time on Wednesday um so obviously folks have a little bit more time with that being said there is a parishwide curfew here in tabone starting at 8 a.m. tomorrow and I was just checking the parish's Facebook page to make sure that that hadn't changed given the 10 p.m. update and I have not seen any indication that that has changed so parishwide curfew beginning at 8:00 a.m. tomorrow across ter bone again a curfew is in effect already for the areas that were asked to evacuate tonight um but this is parishwide starting tomorrow so they really stress that people get out today get those supplies get what you need to get done and we saw that throughout the day we were in tabon I think around 1:00 p.m. this afternoon so from 1 all the way up to 10:00 p.m. we saw people that were out getting gas getting groceries making use of those sandbag sites they had 17 set up across the parish today so we definitely saw folks heating the warning of local officials down here and again we will just have to see what happens tomorrow they have stressed and stressed and stressed and I know you all have said it a thousand times now probably on air this is not a hurricane Ida obviously tabone Parish was devastated by Hurricane Ida 3 years ago this is not a hurricane Ida this is not a wind event they're stressing that it is storm surge that they are going to be watching very closely down the bayou so we will keep an eye on that for you all as well we're going to be um live here tomorrow again staying overnight and H tonight so that we can give you all the latest updates on our down the bayou parishes reporting live in h Lily Cummings WWL Louisiana Lily thank you so much and I know that earlier today you talked with the parish president and you just touched on Hurricane Ida from 3 years ago and the parish president was talking to you about some families that are still in trailers at this point and needed to evacuate can you talk a little bit about those am and how they're coping with this how they're dealing with this yeah Devon I think the parish president was telling me nearly 30 families are still living in RVs at this point post hurricane Ida but a total of around 400 families are still displaced so whether that means you know they're living with family or they're living in a rental home their home is still being renovated or fixed whatever the case may be 400 families still not not where they were prior to Hurricane Ida which is just a heartbreaking statistic to hear from him today um so obviously there is a lot of anxiety when it comes to hurricanes down here I think we're all feeling it across the state when it comes to um our insurance because that storm obviously impacted us greatly in that in that way um so a lot of different feelings around today but you could definitely tell that folks were um taking these messages of warning ser seriously across Tbone Parish yeah I think that's for sure I mean that goes for much of the metro area but down there especially they were hit so hard I know you're going to continue to cover it for us and cover it well so we look forward to more updates for you in a little while thanks Lily all right now we want to get a check on the forecast chief meteorologist Chris Franklin standing by with the latest to give us an update on where the storm is right now and of course you know Lily just talked about times changing apparently people are going to have to start making some adjustments based on that change and expect landfall time right and I guess if there's any change in time maybe it's a little bit better that's it's later and not sooner to where people need to start making those plans immediately you do have a little bit of time and maybe a little bit more time early tomorrow before the onset of some of those tropical storm Forest winds begin spreading from the coast and further Inland throughout the day so the very latest again this is actually we have an update at 10:20 the uh hurricane Hunters were able to find some stronger winds and slightly lower pressure so the wind have come up to now 85 M an hour and pressure at 979 now that doesn't change anything but sometimes with these storms in proximity to land you sometimes get these kind of intermediary uh advisories or updates as new data is presented and one thing we've been looking at is that little area of convection thunderstorms near the center and obviously the hurricane Hunters were able to find winds gust or me wind sustain of 85 mph so it's not too far off of that kind of high threshold that the Hurricane Center was thinking we would see in the strength tomorrow and right to the point of landfall so we'll see if that's something that continues again we'll get new information at 1:00 a.m. officially there could be some in between we won't get a new forecasted track intensity and all until 4:00 a.m. so we've got kind of the all through the overnight period to see if this continues that strength continues and if that is then taken into account for a forecast intensity ATL fall and again we just got the new track so another one doesn't come out until 4:00 a.m. with that structure and the winds right around the center it is definitely trying to get better organized and strengthen a bit I noticed though that the wind or at least the structure around the core of the storm look like it kind of broadened out a little bit it does appear as though some thunderstorms are starting to intensify a bit around that core thankfully if it was going to start kind of finding itself with regards to getting that energy concentrated and start strengthening better now with only about 12 hours to go before it's nearing the coast and certainly well Inland within 24 hours this is the time that you want this to try and do any kind of strengthening because that window of opportunity is quickly closing as we head later into the day tomorrow we're really early tomorrow morning through the later part of the night we will see if the Hurricane Center maintains 90 again we're only 5 m hour away from that now so they might bump those winds up right before landfall again if that is the case then we could be looking at a possible Category 2 again that is not what the models have been indicating and we will see if this new burst of Winds of Maximum winds now continues during the overnight it's possible in later passes of the hurricane Hunters they no longer find even 85 M hour wind so again this is brand new we will see if it is a trend which continues doesn't really change much in the way of our thinking with regards to the landfall position and timing for tomorrow the intensity could increase a bit if this is a trend that does continue through the overnight period models have really not shifted we're kind of honing in on somewhere Eastern Vermillion Bay Western tabone Bay somewhere around that as the likely landfall position however we actually have all the way to just west of rilon bay to into tabone Bay as uh all within the cone of uncertainty as to where that eventual landfall will be if we were able to find Winds of 80 85 mph it is not too far away from the center or or those winds do not uh extend very far away from the center CU that buoy that we've been watching very closely very near the center those sustained winds are only at 43 mph and gusting up to about 60 so what we're going to be watching tomorrow the tropical winds those begin somewhat in the morning for the coast but really more into the midday and through the night that is when we see the 50 to 60 MPH sustained withd potential and at times some winds gusting really the threat is going to be for the prolonged sustain AED winds at times near the kind of hurricane criteria that would be just above what would be normal severe thunderstorm type winds and that does cause some damage it would just be over a larger scale so this would be the time that you would need to secure those items again if there is any uh positive with the maybe later landfall is that you do have a little bit more time early tomorrow morning to get things put away throughout the day we're looking at that storm surge water levels have already been coming up Tides will start going out by the time the highest surge is moving in not going to exactly counteract each other but it's a little bit helpful what you would need to do is get to Higher Ground and the rainfall that'll probably start start at some point tomorrow morning uh doesn't look like it'll be late tonight it won't be until the storm itself getting a little bit closer and that will be through late tomorrow night 4 to 6 in isolated say maybe about 6 to 8 and higher within either some of the rain bands that set up and certainly within the path of where the storm is going to be passing over you will want to avoid any flooded roads you just don't know how deep it is sometimes it's hard to differentiate what is the road and what is one of our canals you do not want to mess with that here's what the models are saying uh with kind of the uh overlay of the hurricane centers forecast not much of a difference in the GFS timing wise about the same strengthwise about the same also indicating kind of that drier air see the lack of the rainfall on the Western Southern and even Eastern end it may be that the heaviest rain is right near the center and just off to the West that is exactly what the Euro has been saying as well we start to see that wind sheare and dry air kind of take over so what may be a little bit better of a structured storm in the near future through overnight and into early tomorrow becomes a little bit more lopsided with the heavier rain on the western the cleaner side of the storm as we get toward landfall and moving Inland so it may be if it does follow this path some of the heaviest of the rain may be kind of Beyond from Baton rout out toward the aaal Basin if we're going to get any heavy rainfall it'd be best if it was out over the aaal Basin not really affecting anyone those winds start picking up again a bit of a breeze we've had overnight t or for tonight through the overnight and then really starting to pick up throughout the day tomorrow so that's why I'm saying I think you'll still have at least based on the Wind sometime in the morning you may be dealing with some of the heavier rainfall but I do think as far as the winds go you will still be able to get out and do a few things wouldn't recommend going driving but if you do need to go check check on someone property pets you still have some time in the morning and then by the afternoon evening you'll want to be wherever you're going to stay through the night good news this again this will take maybe about 6 7even hours to move throughout Louisiana and then it will be gone with improving conditions as we head into early Thursday morning rainfall totals will obviously be higher within some of the rain bands that we see set up especially if we get any kind of training with the heavy rainfall just following uh kind of the same path or wherever the storm makes landfall and moves over land remember it may be right along that Center Line and just off to the west of the Storm Center as we head throughout the day tomorrow storm surge total numbers have really not changed we are still expecting about the 3 to five at the highest from the lake waters and again this is taken into account that strong southeasterly wind piling up the water from Lake Bourne Chandelure sound into the lake and then that water has to go somewhere it makes its way into Lake morpa it floods Southern Tango Parish all of Lake sh Drive Miss Madisonville mandaville