take this storm seriously it is a serious storm your final action should be complete and now is the time to hunker down and ride the Storm Out Fred scene officially made landfall as a category 2 hurricane tonight along the southern Louisiana coast it is now a tropical storm that storm bringing powerful wind gust and Rain nearly 20 years after Hurricane Katrina hit that same region in 2005 good evening thanks for being here I'm Angela Taylor and I'm Rod Carter glad you can join us and Wes is joining us now with look at Francine's path and where things stand right now Wes well guys it's been 5 hours since the category 2 made landfall but all day long the Gulf Coast has been getting hit with heavy rain strong wind and storm surge and as you just heard tonight the most recent update just a couple minutes ago from the National Hurricane Center the storm has now been Inland for several hours so it is starting to weaken and is now back down to Tropical Storm but the name doesn't matter to our friends in the Gul Coast they continue to have incredibly strong winds at 70 mph gusting up to 85 as thankfully this system unlike so many that have hit us over the years it's moving Northeast at 16 mph now it will continue to weaken slow down and move north and head for the Midwest this weekend