neologist Jason Smith we're in storm tracker alert mode due to Francine a tropical storm on its way to becoming a hurricane most likely tonight it's in the western Gulf and it's tracking towards Louisiana we are going to see impacts here we are under a tropical storm warning in our area for Mobile County Balwin County as well as Jackson County Mississippi and the impacts on the moderate end of the scale we're not getting a direct hit we could see storm Tides 2 to 4 feet in our Alabama counties parts of Jackson County could be up to 3 to 5 ft winds around 40 mph generally we will see also some isolated tornadoes around these outer rainbands when they get here tomorrow evening 65 mph system as of the current setup we'll get a new advisory at 700 another one at 10 p.m. the forecast track shows that it's likely going to become a hurricane right now we're thinking a cat one Louisiana landfall at least initially and then it will pass close to our area as a tropical storm in the overnight hours on Wednesday night and Thursday morning and that's why we're concerned about more significant impacts here than that earlier forecast which brought a system pretty far to the West uh High rip current risk very high danger of rip currents through Friday don't go to the beach and jump in and think you can swim it's going to be terrible for that we do have uh models that are running here and they're starting to point more from Lafayette to new Orland so there's a little easterly shift that's been going on today that's why the forecast track has shifted a little as well and the forecast track lines up pretty good with the model guidance there's some spread there but it's not a significant spread still a pretty certain forecast that it'll move west of our area this is one of those models this is the futurecast and what it's showing is a pretty well-developed hurricane tomorrow morning off of luiana we see the convective bands coming in around lunchtime so that's when things will start going down downhill evening time the more intense part of the storm arrives and we could even see a dry air slot punching in here which will send more of a almost a comma shaped tropical storm it may weaken some to a tropical storm by 10:00 tomorrow night and then by midnight still heavily impacting the area and then lifting North the drier air could shut off the precept in our area by Thursday midday or afternoon highest storm surge values Louisiana still some dangerous s surge around the mouth of the Mississippi River looks like we're going to see basically coastal flooding Tides above normal possibly 3 to 5 ft in these locations in our area I think it'll be a little closer to 2 to 3 feet maybe as high as 4 feet in southern Mobile County and so we have to prepare for higher than normal Tides uh looking at the rainfall about 3 to 5 in so we'll add that into the equation it'll be sloppy messy rain some of it heavy at times storm tracker alert mode for Wednesday and Thursday in case the system slows down down a little hopefully we can drop that by midday Thursday 100% rain chance Wednesday 60% Thursday sunny on Friday and Saturday the weather does get better by the weekend here's your 7-day forecast and we do expect better conditions across the Gulf Coast by Friday and Saturday and that'll continue into next week with some spotty showers