NWS Lake Charles Potential Tropical Cyclone 6 Briefing

for e good evening from the National Weather Service office in Lake Charles I'm meteorologist Donald Jones I'm sorry for the little bit earlier uh briefing this evening than we had initially planned we were initially scheduled for 7.m that's why I said 7.m behind me so I just ignore that um but we did have a the National Hurricane Center has begun advisories onone what is now being designated potential tropical Cyclone 6 uh in the southern Gulf of Mexico and we are expecting this to become a tropical storm sometime in the next 24 hours now a potential tropical Cyclone is a it's not a real necessarily tropical Cyclone it's a product that's issued by the National Hurricane Center when a storm is expected to develop into a tropical Cyclone such as tropical storm or a hurricane and landfall is expected within about two days or so it's designed to give people more of a heads up for a system that hasn't necessarily formed yet so even though this potential tropical Cyclone actually does have tropical storm Forest winds winds are already around 50 miles per hour it still does not have a closed Center of circulation so it's not a defined tropical system by definition yet you still have to have an actual closed circulation and this is more of an elongated area of low pressure or a trough as we refer to it in the uh the weather business um very similar to what you would see with a cold front except that this is beginning to gain that circulation we expect it will have a closed circulation sometime in the next 24 hours at that point it will become a tropical storm so from that point it is still forecast to move north with potential impacts expected across our region so I want to go ahead and get on here real quick and give you an update as to what's going on uh and we will obviously continue to provide updates over the next several days all the way through landfall with this as well but I wanted to ahead and jump into this here I thought I was a couple of minutes late because I was trying to throw this together real quick so let's go ahead and uh and jump into our briefing and get the latest as always if you have any questions as we go through our briefing feel free to uh post them in our comments and uh and we'll answer them just as soon as we wrap up our briefing here so let's go ahead and jump into it here if I can is not gonna work of course always something that's okay we'll do it this way uh we do still have as I said that tropical disturbance in the southern Gulf of Mexico it is forecast to be a tropical storm it already has tropical storm Forest winds uh of around 50 mph so we're just waiting on that low level circulation for it to actually reach tropical storm strength the storm is expected to continue to drift North relatively slowly over the next few days um with landfall somewhere across the northern Gulf Coast it looks like sometime on Wednesday and probably closer to more like Wednesday evening based on the current forecast track which I'm going to show you here in just a second we are expecting tropical storm Forest conditions AC across parts of our area hurricane Forest conditions are not out of the realm of possibility in fact this storm is forecast to be a category one hurricane at landfall uh somewhere along the either upper Texas or Louisiana Coastline sometime on Wednesday so hurricane force winds across a fairly small area not out of the realm of possibility with this system let's start by taking a visible a look at the visible satellite imagery here this evening you can see the the area of cloud and thunderstorms the low level circulation is going to form somewhere up in this area here but it hasn't actually developed yet you see how spread out the storm is pretty much across the entire Gulf of Mexico with storms raining all the way from southern Mexico up to just off the Louisiana Coastline and that's what we're talking about saying this is a very elongated area of low pressure it doesn't have a well- defined Center of circulation right now um and because of that the track forecast is still fairly uncertain because depending on exactly where that area of or the lowlevel center of circulation actually develops is going to have a large impact on where the storm eventually tracks so the Hurricane Center has admitted that this is a little bit lower forecast confidence track than it might otherwise normally be having said that here is the new advisory issued by the National Hurricane Center I'm going to go ahead and make this full screen so you can take a look at it here again maximum sustained winds even though this is still just a potential tropical Cyclone are around 50 miles per hour already because we're seeing those strong Gusty winds in some of those rainbands um even as far out as just off the Louisiana Coastline there were some Gale warnings up for for portions of the outer coastal Waters to account for those now we're expecting the storm to continue to drift very slowly you can see it's only moving to the Northwest at around 5 miles per hour and that's going to continue for the next couple of days you can see the little dots there very close together not a whole lot of movement uh with the storm it's going to drift kind of slowly to the north perhaps Northwest over the next two days or so before eventually picking up forward speed as it approaches the either upper Texas or Louisiana Coastline what's going to happen is it's going to get caught up in that Cal front that came through the area yesterday today and that's going to help push it off to the Northeast so this is a system that's probably going to be accelerating as it approaches the coastline and moves Inland so it's not going to be a storm that's going to stall over the area for days and days and days now having said that being as we just saw how large the the circulation or the attempted uh circulation is over the Gulf of Mexico we could be looking at those outer rainbands beginning as early as Tuesday morning and continuing all the way through Thursday so even though it's going to be a fairly rapidly moving storm once it actually picks up speed we still might be dealing with the the impacts of it for a couple of days now again the official forecast track is for the the storm to intensify into a low-end category 1 hurricane with maximum sustained winds near 75 miles hour at landfall the official landfall point right now is right around Sabine Pass right along the Louisiana Texas border now the Hurricane Center has indicated and and a lot of computer models have uh have been kind of moving somewhat to the east to the right of of this forecast track this afternoon this evening if that Trend continues this forecast track would probably shift a little bit more to the right so as as we talked about a second ago the Hurricane Center is saying that this is a fairly low confidence forecast because again we're talking about a storm that the center of circulation hasn't actually formed in yet so it's difficult to pinpoint exactly where to to tell the computer models okay this is the center of the point where's it GNA where's it's going to go from there uh we have to actually have that Center of circulation develop so bear in mind that this forecast track could change somewhat significantly over the next 24 to 36 hours or so it's very important that you continue to remain up to date on the progress of this storm if you're anywhere along the Texas Louisiana even Mississippi Alabama Gulf Coast uh as those forecast track is subject to being changed here over the next couple of days or so as this storm actually gets better organized and actually develops a center of circulation now this is uh all of the graphics that I'm about to show you here are based on the current forecast track so if that forecast track were to shift one way or the other or the sto the storm was to be weaker or more intense than uh is presently being forecast these Graphics are going to change but I want to kind of give you an idea at least initially of what we're anticipating these are the the probabilities of seeing tropical storm force winds uh in an area so for Coastal parts of Southwest Louisiana South Central Louisiana we're looking at a 30 to 40% chance right now of seeing at least tropical storm storm Forest Winds of 40 mph or greater and that pretty much extends up as far north as right around Lake Charles or thereabouts uh same thing going back across the Southeast Texas Coastline we're looking at anywhere between about a 20 to 30% chance up to as far as the Bowmont P Arthur area and then a slightly lower chance going further Inland about a 20 10 to 20% chance as you get up towards parts of Harden and Tyler County again these probabilities are subject to change and if that sounds like it's very low that's because again we're still looking at about 48 is hours away so these probabilities will come up as the the storm gets better organized and as it approaches the coastline so these are actually fairly High probabilities for a storm that's still two or three days away um taking a look at the probabilities for Hurricane force winds right now again the the forecast is for the storm to to be become at least a a category one hurricane prior to landfall but that is still very uncertain at this point so the probabilities of seeing hurricane force winds are less than five % across all of Southeast Texas Southwest Louisiana pretty much everywhere you can see the the one little uh area in green there that's still out over the Gulf of Mexico that's a 5 to 10% chance of seeing those hurricane force winds but the probabilities across any land area are less than 5% at least at this time now if we're going to see tropical storm Forest winds when are they going to start the most likely time that we're going to see tropical storm Forest winds begin are going to be Wednesday morning we're looking at between about 8:00 a. and noon Wednesday morning for the onset of those tropical storm force winds so as we go through this event if you're making preparations um you know if we're if evacuation orders become necessary this is kind of the uh the drop time this is when you want to have all of those preparations complete and if you're going to evacuate I'm not saying that you should there have been no evacuation orders issued as of yet uh but if that becomes necessary Wednesday morning is going to be your your deadline to get all of that done um because we're going to be looking at those tropical storm force winds beginning to move Inland at that time again this is subject to change should the uh the forecast track or intensity change uh but we're looking at between about 8:00 a.m. and noon Wednesday morning for the onset of tropical storm force winds that's anywhere across Southeast Texas and Southwest Louisiana if this track were to shift a little bit further east say into Southeast Louisiana you'd probably be looking at more of a uh noon to early afternoon time frame for the onset of those tropical storm force winds if you're going to see them between about noon and say 4 pm or thereabouts now this is the what we call the earliest reasonable time of arrival so this is kind of the uh the earliest you could possibly expect uh tropical storm force winds and that's going to be a little bit earlier so we're looking at between about 8:00 p.m. in Midnight Tuesday evening for the earliest possible onset of those tropical storm force winds again that is subject to change should the other the forecast track or intensity change now I want to talk a little bit about what's steering this storm and that part is actually fairly straightforward um for a tropical system let me grab my little pen here so I can write on this um so essentially what we're looking at here is find nice bright color here so here's the potential tropical storm which at this point will probably be a tropical storm we'll call it TS right there we have that lingering coal Prime that's still sitting across the coastal Waters across uh Southern Louisiana back into upper Texas this has been sitting here even though it's kind of moved offshore it's still sitting there the winds are moving fairly strong to the east to the to the northe with that then we've got this area of high pressure over the Eastern Gulf this essentially extends out to roughly about there um so what's going to happen here is these winds are going to be moving clockwise around this area of high pressure like that that's what's going to drive the storm essentially Northwest and then eventually to the north then it's going to get caught up in this cold front and it's going to take off to the Northeast just like that that's why it's going to begin to accelerate and move off um as those steering currents associated with the cold front actually pick it up and carry it off to the north east so that's kind of what's driving the storm and that's the rationale behind the forecast track at this point I don't don't expect this to change a whole lot the biggest uh area of uncertainty right now is exactly where that Center of circulation is going to develop because that'll have an impact on how far west or east along the northern Gulf Coast the storm eventually winds up getting okay all right so as far as conditions for development sea surface temperatures across develop of Mexico remain very warm I showed this graphic last night we're still looking at Sea surface temperatures between about 86 and 88 degrees those are certainly uh plenty favorable enough for tropical development you need about 80° Fahrenheit for uh to support a tropical storm and we're well above that at this point and will remain so um probably for the next few weeks at least the other thing we look at when we're talking about uh storms developing and how quickly they're going to develop is the potential for wind shear uh and you can see the bright Reds and yellows there across the northern Gulf that's areas of Fairly strong wind shear that you're seeing and that is uh actually related to the uh the coal front that's sitting off the coast there um but you can see as you look further down into the southern Gulf of Mexico the Western Gulf of Mexico those greens and blues those are areas of fairly low wind here and so we're looking at fairly um fairly favorable conditions down that way for uh for the storm to continue to intensify here over the next couple of days and it's going to stay in that favorable environment because again it's not moving very fast at this point it's only moving about 5 miles an hour or thereabout so there is going to be some time to intensify now as it gets picked up by that cold front I think that might start to uh to impact it negatively we'll see how that winds up developing if that wind share is still in place at that time but at least for the next couple of days conditions are going to be pretty favorable uh for the development and intensification of this storm all right now let's start talking a little bit about expected impacts across the region so we can you know we'll be going back and forth a little bit about exactly where this landfall is going to take place and exactly where it does is going to have a large impact on some uh some of the impacts that we're going to see but rainfall is going to be pretty widespread regardless of exactly where the center of circulation makes landfall so you can see this is the excessive rainfall outlook for Tuesday this is a product issued by the weather prediction center uh the slight risk area there let me if I can move me out of the way here you can see the are is in yellow so that's all of south Louisiana essentially and uh and most portions of coastal parts of Southeast Texas that is a slight risk so about a 15% chance of seeing flash flooding anywhere within this location or within 25 miles of any location in the the areas highlighted in yellow so New Orleans Baton Rouge Lake Charles Lafayette New Iberia back towards Bowman even back towards Houston all in that slight risk area so a 15% chance of seeing flash flooding from some of these bands with that uh that storm as it begins to approach on Tuesday now as we head into Wednesday that uh that risk area expands even further into parts of Central and even Northern Louisiana into parts of uh Southern Mississippi we're looking at still about a 15% chance of seeing a flash flooding on Wednesday associated with this and as the storm gets its act together even more I expect these probabilities will intensify even further this is a look at our forecast rainfall totals right now you can see along the coastal portions of U Southeast Texas and especially Southwest and South Central Louisiana the areas highlighted in Orange there that is a six to 8 inch range that we're anticipating um a lot of areas in that region to see 6 to 8 Ines or more of rainfall along the coastline with this storm the area is highlighted in yellow that goes a little bit further to the north say north of Lake Charles up towards Alexandria Baton Rouge New Orleans all of those areas are in that yellow that's a four to six inch range that we're expecting between about four and six inches of rainfall with this storm again these are all subject to change should the forecast track change significantly but I think with even with those outer rainbands we're going to be seeing some significant rainfall with this the system so this is probably a fairly good first estimate on uh on what we would expect to see um in terms of rainfall totals another uh thing I want to kind of show you here these are the probabilities of seeing significant rainfall across the region I realized this is not a very good map uh but it kind of gives you at least a general idea you kind of make out the Texas Louisiana State Line there uh you see Houston is labeled der Ritter is labeled Baton Rouge is labeled so you can kind of sort of pick out exactly where you are but the bottom line here is that we're looking at between about an 60 and 80% chance of seeing more than two inches of rainfall with this system we're looking at about a 30 to 60% chance of seeing more than 4 Ines of rainfall with this system across Southeast Texas and Southwest Louisiana and we're looking at between about a 20 and 40% chance of seeing more than six inches of rainfall of course the highest risk areas are going to be across Coastal portions of Southeast Texas and Southwest Louisiana now there will be storm surge with this system or any wether even if we're talking about a lowend tropical storm 40 50 m hour winds are enough to to cause storm surge across the region I wanted to show two Graphics here but I didn't have time to put them all together I'll have them for the next briefing um but this is going to be our worst case scenario not everybody is going to to see the uh the storm surge that I'm depicting here but this would be our worst case scenario um for possible storm surge across the region I've got zoomed in here this is the Lake Charles area uh and goes uh essentially over West to Orange you can see the significant coastal flooding across parts of Cameron Parish that should come as a surprise to absolutely nobody and uh you can kind of see the extent of the storm surge up the kashu and uh and the Sabine with uh with our our worst case scenario with this system for a category one hurricane essentially moving right up the Sabine River thereabouts we're looking at anywhere between three to five foot of surge uh moving up the kashu river uh with this pay no attention to the the text on the left hand side there I didn't get to look at it but the primary thing I want you to focus on here is the graphic I put these together in a hurry so I apologize for that moving a little bit further to the east this is over towards Vermillion Parish Lafayette down towards Morgan City again this is our worst case scenario for storm surge with this system right along the immediate Coastline you can see the 7 to n foot potential storm surge across Coastal portions of Vermilion Parish uh and then Coastal portions um of St Martin St Mary down outside of the the levy systems uh down that way towards uh towards Morgan City and then back across Southeast Texas again our reason our worst case storm Sur scenario uh has roughly about 3 to five feet moving up the uh the Sabine there and uh that would impact Eastern portions of the Port Arthur area with uh with some storm surge getting into the Bowmont area as well now again I'm going to uh to get another graphic here for our next briefing that's going to have our most likely storm surge to go along with our worst case scenarios um so again this is not necessarily what is being forecast this is our absolute worst case scario so chances are um any storm surge that we see is going to be better uh than what is being depicted here finally taking a quick look at our forecast as we go through the rest of the week obviously it's going to be wet that's the bottom line here as we go through through at least the middle and latter part of the week the uh the potential landfall on Wednesday we'll still be looking at rain from uh from rainbands on the backside as we go into Thursday and then hopefully we'll be done with all of this by Friday because again the storm is going to be accelerating off to the Northeast as it makes landfall regardless of exactly where it makes landfall uh so we will be seeing it move Inland fairly rapidly thereafter so that's what we have here this evening from the National Weather Service again I know I kind of threw this together in a bit of a hurry so I'm missing some of the stuff that I would usually talk about here but I'm going to try to uh to get another briefing together and we'll try to do another one later on tonight so I'll have uh details about that here uh later on this evening with that and of course we are going to continue to provide regular updates uh with each successive advisory all the way up to and through landfall the next official advisory comes out from the National Hurricane Center at 10 p.m this evening uh so we will have another Facebook live briefing for you for that at that time so plan to do another one here let's say 10:30 this evening uh we're going to put a number on it and then if we're going to do if we have to do another one earlier than that I'll put uh social media posts out there to let everyone know so again we do have uh if we do have any questions feel free to post them in our comment section I know we've got a lot of people watching right now looks like we've got about uh 2200 people watching at the moment um so I realized this probably caught a few people off guard it kind of caught me off guard I came in yesterday I'm like what is that and now we're talking about a potential tropical cycline it's that time of year we're actually officially two days away from the climatological peak of hurricane season um so we're kind of right on schedule as far as uh one that we're going to be looking at a tropical system uh let's see stie asks are we looking at this to be a significant hurricane right now the official forecast is for it to be a minimal category one hurricane so maximum sustained winds Atlant landfall are expected to be right around 75 milph now that is certainly enough to cause some power outages it's certainly enough to cause some storm surge it's not going to cause the devastation at least based on the current track that's you know on the order of a hurricane LA or something like that that was a category 4 storm with much stronger wins but 75 miles per hour is certainly strong enough to do some damage and it is certainly strong enough to cause some power outages okay just running through uh some of the comments here to see if we do have any questions enjoy this moment of dead air so you don't have to listen to me talking sometimes I get tired of listening to myself talking on here uh anasi Anan asks I see in another place the hurricane will be a category three is that true that's very unlikely uh at least at this point I wouldn't say that it's 100% impossible because I never St never with these storms we've seen them do some crazy stuff before um but I think even a category one hurricane is probably going to be on the upper end of of the reasonable forecast situation right now so I think uh a category one hurricane is certainly possible a category three is is pretty out there that's going to be an outlier uh situation so no I don't think that's likely at this point Stephen ask what are the chances of it going further east than Lake Charles pretty good actually um most of the recent computer models have actually come in a little bit further to the east um than this official forecast track and the Hurricane Center has said that if that Trend continues this track will probably have to be shifted a little bit further to the east uh so do expect that there's going to be some changes in this forecast track even as soon as late tonight we could have a shift in this forecast track and if it's going to shift it's most likely going to shift to the east or to the ruy Roger says the anticipated wind speeds in Lake Charles at landfall based on the current forecast track we're going to be looking at tropical storm force winds so just off the top of my head you'd probably be looking at 50 to 60 M hour winds or at least wind gusts Taylor ask says we're in Creole and ask about evacuation first off I don't make evacuation decisions that's your your local emergency managers and your local elected officials they make evacuation orders um as far as I know there have been no evacuation orders issued the uh the emergency managers and and that community that I just mentioned had just been brief they've been given very similar briefing to what what I've just given you here they were brief just within the last half hour or so so they'll be making those decisions and putting those plans in place as we go through the evening but as of right now uh I'm not aware of any evacuation orders that have been put into place at this time Brooklyn ask Will it hit Alexandria as a hurricane no we're not expecting it to be still be a hurricane as far north as Alexandria in order for that to be the case it would have to be a much much stronger storm than what we're for casting here so no we're not expecting hurricane force winds in Alexandria right now Patty says I know it's early but what is the biggest concern for this storm stalling excessive rain or tornadoes well we're not expecting it to stall we are expecting significant rain and yes I think that is going to be your number one concern with this system is going to be the potential for flooding from heavy rainfall tornadoes will also be a possibility but I think flooding is going to be the the biggest overall threat so yeah we will have a flooding from heavy rainfall there likely will be a few tornadoes and there will be some storm surge um but I think flooding is going to be by far the biggest issue with this storm Brian ask when will you do post a parish by Parish impact slide that'll probably come tomorrow sometime maybe late tomorrow I usually try to do that about a dayish before the storm actually makes landfall once we have a good idea of where it's going to go uh we'll have to see exactly how this develops once we have a pretty good idea of where it's going to go and what the strength is going to be then we'll do that Parish by Parish impact uh Graphics Audrey asked Can This Storm become stronger than a category one or do y'all not expect it to at this point we don't expect it we're expecting a category one um to be kind of the the strongest that we're expecting it to be at this point is that does that mean it can't overachieve and do better uh no of course not we could potentially have a category two that's not out of the realm of possibility but right now the official forecast is for a low-end category one hurricane with maximum Winds of 75 miles hour there's a fairly decent chance it doesn't even make hurricane strength we could be looking at just a mid-range or strong tropical storm at landfall as well um but right now category one hurricane is what we're forecasting yes that could be we could be looking at something a little stronger um but we're not expecting that at this time uh Ian Don guy asked will it close schools in Houston again I have no control over that at all uh but based on the current forecast track I would not expect schools to close in Houston J ask what are we looking at in New Iberia uh again this is based on the current forecast track which could shift and if this shifts further to the east your impacts would be more significant but essentially we're going to be looking at the potential for tropical storm force winds the biggest issue is going to be the potential for heavy rainfall let me goe and make this full screen for you so for the New Iberia area we're looking at and pretty much all of coastal South Louisiana or south West Louisiana and South Central we're looking at between about six and8 inches of rainfall uh expected that's going to be your biggest overall threat right now uh and then we will be looking at the possibility of perhaps a few tornadoes with some of those bands um as it approaches all right just trying to run through there's a whole lot of comments right now I'm trying to run through them as fast as I can uh Sandra says two days away if an Evac is called where to go uh based on the current forecast track and the the fact that we're kind of uh leaning a little bit to the right of that my advice right now would be probably West um if you move west over towards the Houston area or west of Houston um if you had to evacuate that would probably be the way to way to go um you could also go north you know our our longtime motto in this this office has always been we run from the water we hide from the wind um so the storm surge is the biggest threat to to life and property to a lesser extent the flooding rainfall as well so if you move go a little bit further north you get away from the storm surge you can potentially get away from the highest overall flooding then you're in a significantly safer place than you might already be so at least for right now my advice would be either go west towards Houston or north towards treport but again as of right now there have been no evacuation orders issued uh for any areas a little bit Laur asked could this have the potential to make a category two storm it's not out of the realm of possibility again the official forecast though is for a category one Dorothy is in evacuation necessary for a category one that depends on where you live and what kind of uh structure excuse me you're living in if you live right along the Cameron Coast then yes an evacuation order is or an evacuation is probably recommended uh if you live anywhere further Inland um generally probably not so much but again you need to the your emergency managers will have they have lots and lots of detail about different storms how they approach what kind of impacts are usually seen in that and they issue evacuation orders based on that so those are the warnings and the evacuation orders that that you heed if you you find yourself under an evacuation order then that's when you need to to evacuate that's that's pretty much what it boils down to Patty ask do we know how long to expect 75 m per hour winds to be sustained if this forecast track verifies not long at all um you know if we're talking about a minimal category one hurricane at landfall a 75 mph hurricane it'll be weakening rapid as it moves Inland so maybe just a couple of hours at most now if it were much stronger then you'd be looking at a much longer period of time for Hurricane force winds sha ask why the discrepancy between the GFS and the NHC track because the National Hurricane Center like all of us uh as meteorologists we do not rely on any single model or any single model run to make a forecast our forecast is a culmination of many different computer models so the GFS is just one run of one computer model and the hurricane Center's forecast is a conglomeration of many computer models and their own expertise so very rarely will the two line up perfectly haey asked When will calu school board be meeting with you guys to make a decision on school closures again they've been briefed already they were briefed actually they may be still getting briefed right now if not they were just briefed um so they have all the information that we have and all the information that I just gave you um as far as when they'll make decisions that's on their own time we have no control over that uh Belinda asks what about the uh the tornado threat there is potentially going to be a tornado threat um regardless of where the storm actually winds up making landfall if the storm intensifies into a strong tropical storm or a low-end hurricane there will be a tornado threat as the storm makes landfall and move in now historically and generally we usually see those tornado threats on the right hand side or the east side of a storm so anywhere along and east of wherever that Center makes landfall that's where we're most likely to see torant um Donna asks is there any chance of warnings going out uh like tropical storm or hurricane warnings yeah those will likely go out um a as the storm gets within the time frame for them we need to be within 48 hours for a watch I think it's 36 hours for a warning if I'm not mistaken uh so once we get within those time frames then the appropriate watches and warnings will go out uh georgette's asking what are my thoughts about the possibility of this going further east towards New Orleans I don't know about as far east as New Orleans but there are several computer models that are shifting the the track further to the east so it would not surprise me if that Trend continues through the evening it wouldn't surprise me to see this forecast track shift somewhat to the east will it shift as far east as New Orleans I don't think so at least not yet um but we could see a shift to the east later on tonight or tomorrow Karen says when will they let us know if we need to evacuate um probably sometime within the next day or so um it wouldn't surprise me to see those come out either tomorrow or possibly Tuesday uh I'd say Tuesday at the latest so um late tomorrow or Tuesday most likely way ask how would this storm be in comparison to Hurricane Delta hurricane Delta was a category 2 storm um I think it was an upper level category two storm but still a category two storm nonetheless um so it would probably be somewhat comparable uh perhaps a little weaker than that again we're talking about a category one storm um but I would say probably less less destructive than Delta at least based strictly on paper but again I don't like comparing storms to one another because they all have they have different circulation sizes um they have different makeups they're in different storm environments steering environments so you can't necessarily directly compare one storm to another or say that okay I was fine In This Storm so I'll be fine in that storm it doesn't work that way uh different storms approaching from the coastline at different angles you might have one that's approaching this way you might have another one that's approaching this way and and the storm surge from that is going to be completely different uh because the physics of it is completely different so I don't like comparing one storm to another so let's let's try to avoid doing that as much as we can okay I'm I'm way behind on the comments here so I'm going to scroll forward a little bit here Jason asked do the models include the hurricane hunter data yet yes they do now uh the hurricane hunter aircraft were out this morning they took some data all of that went into the what we call the 18z Run that's kind of the midday run of uh of the computer model so that data is now being brought into there uh and will continue to be brought into there all the way through the landfall of the storm in addition to that we are also releasing extra weather balloons um at our office and at other offices around the GF Coast so that's extra data that'll also be put into Those computer models to provide a more accurate picture of uh of what the track is eventually going to be theana asked if we all blow really hard can we move it to Florida if only it was that easy I'd start I'd go outside right now but unfortunately no it just doesn't work that way Janet asks should refineries and bont be preparing for a controlled shutdown I'm not sure what the criteria are for for refineries and their their controls shutdowns um I'm sure they're certainly keeping a very close eye on it some of them may be actually watching this briefing even now um but I can't really speak to that because I'm not sure what their criteria are Joshua asks is there a good chance for dry air to intercept the system that's an interesting way of putting that I've been watching YouTube videos on the outlooks there's not a whole lot of dry air uh out there at the moment at least not that I've seen um so no I don't expect that to be a major issue with this system conditions are are fairly fairly favorable for development of the storm Kem says can you talk about the potential storm surge near inter coastal city I don't want to get two in the weeds with that yet because again that the when we're talking about storm surge we're talking about a an impact that is going to be highly highly uh affected by the exact location of the land fall so um I can give you here's a graphic here that kind of showed you got you can see Vermillion there inter coastal city is not specifically outlined um but again this is our worst case scenario this is not necessarily what is being forecast this is uh what we would expect to see in a worst case scenario of a category one hurricane moving essentially just to the west of inter coastal city um with maximum storm surge uh moving into kind of Vermillion Bay uh and that's not necessarily what's being forecast at this time um so we're going to get more specific about storm surge here once we get a little bit better handle on exactly uh where we expect this storm to go uh so I don't want to get too into the the weeds with the exact specifics on storm surge but yes there is going to be the potential for storm surge obviously across the uh the Western and parts of Vermillion Bay um if we have any kind of a storm that's approaching uh from the west and we get those easterly or southeasterly winds pushing water into Vermillion Bay okay Mike says this seems weak for a September storm is it um well I mean all storms start off weak don't they you got to start somewhere um so the the the the biggest limiting factor with with the intensity as it relates to the storm is how much time it's going to be out over the Gulf of Mexico you know we're looking at roughly a little over 48 Hours you know we're looking at a landfall likely sometime Wednesday afternoon into Wednesday evening as the most likely time of a rival or or the most like yeah for those tropical storm Force wins um so that's going to be the the biggest limiting factor if it had time to just sit out over the gulf and spin for a few days then it would likely ramp up a little more conditions aren't necessarily ideal either they're favorable but they're not ideal we do still have some some windsh across the northern Gulf so that's kind of somewhat of a limiting factor um so you know that that's you can't really say that this is a weak or strong storm for a certain time of year uh yeah Barrel was definitely the one earlier in in July was an extreme outlier in fact that it was the earliest Category 5 hurricane I think ever uh but in general you know you can still get category one tropical storms in September and that's all they become that's that's not necessarily uncommon uh Laura asked when will the hurricane Hunters go back out again didn't check their schedule but I'd imagine they're probably if they're not doing Round the Clock uh planes out there right now they're probably pretty close to it at this point um and they will continue to ramp that up um so to be honest I don't have an answer for you straight up right now I'll have to go check and see uh but my guess is they'll probably be out back out there this evening if they're not out there right now Aon ask is there a chance for Rapid intensification like we talked about couple of minutes ago it the conditions aren't necessarily ideal you usually need to have pretty close to ideal conditions for a rapid intensification situation um I'm not saying that it's completely out of the realm of possibility but there are some limiting factors with with that storm Sur I'm not storm surge the wind shear in the uh the northern Gulf that's kind of going to keep conditions slightly less than then perfect for that rapid intensification um so while it's not impossible I don't think it's particularly likely at this point Mike says I've seen on some models earlier the wind was higher on the western side than the Eastern side is that still the case um it's I think the winds are actually highest on kind of the northern side right now POS now I think you're you're right I think there is a band on the western side that probably has some pretty strong winds the reason for that is the storm actually doesn't have a defined Center of circulation yet it's still elongated it's still a a essentially a trough of low pressure um so if you look at the satellite image this is about an hour old now but you can see essentially this is drawn out all the way across most of the Gulf of Mexico here so this uh this is probably the band or the area that would have those strong winds you were talking about but you can see the the center of circulation is probably going to develop somewhere up in here but this extends all the way out here just like this okay so that is still that's what we call a trough of low pressure at this point eventually this is going to wrap into some kind of circulation somewhere up in there exactly where still kind of remains to be seen but um but because it's so spread out and so elongated as a trough you're you're not looking at a typical tropical system right now so it's not unusual for winds to be stronger on the west side now as that storm begins to wrap up and get it gets itself better organized you'll probably start to see those stronger winds shift to the east side of the storm Su says I thought Lura was a cat 3 at landfall Donald said it was a four no it was a four it was actually a very strong four it was closer to a five than a four some people would argue that it is a five even though it wasn't it was a four it was a strong four uh Ian dony says could the track shift West spaghetti models have been shifting West hitting at a possible landfall at bont High Island actually no they've actually been Shifting the opposite direction we've been looking at the more recent model runs have been shifting further to the east so I think that's probably more likely uh than a shift to the West Dana ask do you know how quickly it'll pass through we're going to be looking at this storm it's it's moving quite slow right now let me pull this put this back full screen for you here um it's only moving to the Northwest at about 5 miles per hour but we are going to be looking at it picking up speed as it approaches uh either the upper Texas Coast or the Louisiana Coastline you can see how those dots are all very close together as we go into the first one is tomorrow afternoon at 1 pm then 1:00 am then Tuesday at 1 pm you see they're all very clustered very close together and then we start to see them kind of spread apart again that's it that's because it's going to be accelerating it's going to be picking up speed as it uh approaches the coastline so um I can't tell you exactly you know it's going to m moving at X miles per hour um as it makes landfall but it is going to be accelerating off to the Northeast as it makes landfall so rather than slowing down it's actually G to be picking up speed as it approaches the coast Kate ask if I cook a gumbo tonight will it still be good by landfall if you have a refrigerator yes and in fact it might be better at landfall than it is right now because gumbo that that sits a while tends to get better okay trying to uh catch up here I'm I'm about 15 minutes behind on the uh the questions here uh toret asked what are the water temps the water temps right now are ranging between about uh 60 I mean 86 and 88 degrees you wish they were 66 um where are my water temp they are so we're looking at between about 86 and 88 degrees for water temperatures right now Regina ask if it does shift East will our rain chances significantly decrease it depends on exactly where you are um if this storm were to to shift a you know significantly further east into say Southeast Louisiana then you'd see probably significantly less rain across Southeast Texas if we're just looking at a little bit of of a shift you know 30 50 miles one way or the other that's likely not going to have a huge impact on how much rain we're gonna see Chrissy ask is there any chance of this storm stalling in the Gulf like Harvey no like we talked about a minute ago and I'm sure you uh you probably posted this before we talked about it but um the storm should be accelerating rather than slowing down it's going to be picking up speed as it approaches the coast and uh and moves inland okay uh I'm sorry if I missed some of your questions I'm trying to to catch up a little bit here so I'm having to skip a few there's just too many of them at the moment but I'm try to answer as many of them as I can I'm trying to trying to get a few of them at once or a few questions with one answer because there's a lot of the the same ones uh Melissa ask there's no chance of it hitting bont area no I'm not saying that at all you see the bont area is still within the cone of uncertainty I'm not saying that that there's no chance that you're not going to see impacts I'm saying that the the chances of a shift further to the East are more likely than a shift further to the West I'm not saying that that there's no chance of it hitting bont right now Jason ask what time frame do you think we'll see the center forms the models can be more accurate uh we're looking at that probably within the next 12 to to 24 hours so probably either tomorrow morning or sometime during the day tomorrow at least that's what we're expecting Natalie ask when will the next update be we're going to do another update this evening following the next update by the hurricane center that comes out at 10: so we'll do our next briefing at 10:30 we're going to do another briefing at 10:30 p.m. for Brian ask if it shifts to the east could it shift back to the West yes absolutely that's why we have this uh you know the cone of uncertainty you see the cone there extends essent essentially from looks like it's all the way down to about Corpus Christie all the way over to uh the Baton Rouge area so there's still a very large area of uncertainty and I expect shifts both West and East right now I think it's more likely if we're going to see a shift with the next forecast update it's probably going to be to the east or to the right um but we could see it shift back to the West at some point yeah absolutely let asked we will we see a shift in the cone by the update at 10:30 tonight the uh the next official update from the Hurricane Center comes out at 10 o'clock we'll have a complete new advisory and uh if the computer models continue to shift to the east then the track will probably shift to the east we'll see we'll see how that looks as we go through the evening rice asked what would dictate an East or West shift to the cone as of now spaghetti models and ensembles are a bit different yeah um well what we're looking for is more of a consensus if there's a big split then you're probably not going to see too much of a shift either way the Hurricane Center likes to kind of split the difference when we're looking at uh at two large splits they're not too far different right now um but what we're looking for is a consensus we're trying to look for for clusters of uh of different model runs uh and different Ensemble runs that uh that gives us confidence in the forecast and then also the expertise of of the hurricane center for this kind of environment and how storms have behaved in this kind of environment before David ask Donald can I bring you a yellow shirt you can bring me one I'm not gonna wear it but you can bring it okay just trying to catch up on some questions here I think I'm I'm getting closer I do realize I'm skipping a lot of questions I apologize for that but there's so many of them we'd be on here until the next briefing just trying to answer these so I'm trying to uh to gather as many of them as I'm seeing them I'm trying to uh to Cluster them together and try to answer several people at once Chris ask will the wind shear play a factor in keeping this storm from strengthening somewhat yes there is some wind shear across the northern Gulf and um it's not going to stop it entirely but I think it's going to uh to keep it a little bit more limited than it might otherwise be Haley ask which model do you tend to lean towards is there a specific one that's better no no there's not there's different models that do well in different situations um and there every model has its own biases um some have a tendency to to spin Every Little Wave that's out there into a gigantic hurricane others never develop a hurricane some have wet biases some have dry biases some have East biases some have West biases and that's why we never rely on a single model run um to to actually make a forecast and and I'm the same way I don't ever look at one single model I like to look at many many different runs of as many models as I can uh and you also need to have an understanding of of what those model biases are so no there isn't one that I necessarily lean towards more than another Al ask when are you expecting an eye of circulation to form we're expecting a center of circulation to form probably sometime during the day tomorrow tomorrow um we're looking at between probably about 12 and 24 hours that'd be sometime between tomorrow morning and tomorrow evening Michelle says when I go to Disney World in January I'm gonna bring you a black shirt with a Donald Duck on it which makes you think I don't already have one of those I might keep watching you might see it it might make it in here Mickey Mouse is back there somewhere too Elizabeth says hey Donald Jones how do all right we've devolved into shirts now I'm going to take it we're just about done here then all right I think we are going to go ahead and wrap up here for the time being I think I've answered a lot of the questions that that I'm running through here I'm seeing a lot of the same ones um so if you you joined us late you you can actually rewind back to the the beginning the first 10 minutes are there about or the actual briefing this will also be available as a recording just as soon as we get off the live version of it here so you're welcome to that the first 10 minutes or so is is when we actually talk about the briefing we go through the slides after that it's mostly just questions and answers uh but that'll give you uh that'll answer probably about 90 95% of the questions that you may still have if you do have a question that I missed for some reason feel free to uh send us a direct message on Facebook I'll be happy to answer it that way uh you can also give us a call or send me an email my email and phone number is there on the screen there it's donald. Jones noaa.gov uh and our phone number here at the the office is 33747 7- 5285 we're here 24 hours a day seven days a week we have forecasters here all the time we'll be happy to answer any questions you have uh and then of course you can email me directly if you have any questions also you can also message us on Facebook message us on Twitter message us on Instagram and we'll be happy to answer you that way as well so lots of ways to get in touch with us to get your questions answered if uh you still have burning ones again our next one is going to be our next briefing will be 10:30 p.m. this evening we'll have a new update from the National Hurricane Center at that time with all the latest and greatest I'll find I'll try to have a a little bit more cohesive package for you in terms of Graphics here this one was kind of thrown together fairly quickly uh but we'll try to have a better uh understanding of that later on this evening so again next briefing will be 10:30 pm this evening we'll see you all then in the meantime everyone have a wonderful rest of your afternoon and evening get out and enjoy this nice weather it's the Calm before the storm per se it's nice out there though so do step outside and enjoy it for a little while everyone have a rest wonderful rest for your evening we'll talk to you again at 10:30 for 10:30 Sy