hurricane Francine has slammed into Louisiana with potential for lifethreatening flooding and storm surge this comes as residents of the Southern US state were advised to hunker down indoors according to the National Hurricane Center Francine made landfall as a category 2 hurricane on a five level scale in turbon Parish on the southern edge of the state at 5:00 p.m. local time the storm weakened as it moved more land however forecasters say that it was still causing flooding power outages and heavy rain and wind a flash FL emergency has been issued for the City of New Orleans 2 hours after landfall the storm was downgraded to category 1 with sustained winds of 140 km per hour and could bring up to 10 ft of storm surge and a foot of rain in some parts of Louisiana it is now a category 2 hurricane on the saffro Simpson scale with peak wind of 100 mph 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 the National Weather Services New Orleans office issued a flash flood emergency for the city and nearby districts known as parishes while New Orleans mayor has urged residents to shelter shelter in place local TV stations and footage on social media showed coastal towns battered by the storm with some streets flooded according to monitoring website powder outage us more than 300,000 customers across Louisiana were without power in the town of haa residents filled sandbags stocked up on supplies with their cars with gas ahead of Storm's arrival the national hcan Center said the storm is expected to quickly weaken as it moves Inland over Louisiana and neighboring Mississippi Louisiana governor has declared a state of emergency and has requested a federal emergency declaration from President Joe Biden which he quickly approved the schools and universities around the capital baton Ro have been preemptively closed until Friday curfew starts at early at 6:00 p.m. local time that have been issued for communities across the Louisiana capital region [Music]