welcome back everybody with the 5:00 p.m. Eastern 400 p.m. central update on Hurricane Francine so the big story of the evening is Francine has continued to intensify uh through the afternoon as it's trying to make landfall here as I speak just southa Louisiana it is now a category 2 hurricane on the saffr Simpson scale with Peak Winds of 100 miles hour you can look at the radar here and you can see that the radar has really filled in rapidly over Southern uh Louisiana and uh Southern Alabama conditions are going to go downhill really rapidly over the next several hours hopefully if you're listening to us from Southern Louisiana you're already where you need to be for the overnight hours and just stay there it's not going to be a good night to be driving on the roads especially when the Sun goes down you will not be able to see flooded streets you will not be able to see down trees down power lines so you need to stay off the roads in these areas uh as I said earlier it's about to make landfall be making landfall the next hour or so just south of H and then moving briskly off uh over over or near uh greater New Orleans area uh and so conditions are going to go down hill for them relatively quickly now I want to show you real quick flood watches and warnings are in effect over you can see so the darker uh green here is a flood watch I'll zoom out so you can see the greater extent flood watches in the brighter areas here of flood warnings that means it's all flooding is occurring or imminent so you can really see the flood warnings are starting to fill in and that will continue over the next several hours as these heavy bands move ashore also want to go back and show you that we also have a tornado watch here this is this red area that I've highlighted on the radar as these bands come ashore you can get these tornadoes to spin up bottom line is it's just the all hazards coming together here in Southern Louisiana and Alabama speaking of water hazards I want to stick with the water hazards and show you a storm surge warning a storm surge warning is still in effect for U Southern Louisiana around to uh uh Gulfport Mississippi um 5 to 10 fet here where the center makes landfall not everywhere within the storm surge warning area but here where the center makes landfall this is probably occurring as we speak uh heavy rain storm surge don't mix well so this is going to be a big flood impact here over Southern Louisiana now for you folks further Inland they're asking where is it going to go once it moves further Inland so let's take a zoom back out a little bit put the cone on here you can see it moves briskly up the Mississippi River Valley over the next several days and it weakens from the traditional wind perspective but it doesn't weaken from the rainfall perspective I'll show a graphic here you might not be used to seeing here we're going to put the first we're going to put the flood watches and warnings back on there you can see the flood watch how far inland it extends but I want people east of the track to start paying attention what is east of the track what am I talking about Birmingham Montgomery and Atlanta I want you to start paying attention to this storm from a rainfall risk perspective this is the type of setup we get we can get rainfall to be displaced well to the east of the the center of circulation so I really want you to start paying attention check the weather at least once per day ideally twice per day if you're in these areas also me Memphis and nashille you need to be on alert paying attention from a rainfall risk perspective that is it for us on this advisory we'll be back with you tomorrow with more updates and as always you can get the most updated information from from hurricanes.gov