At long last, and now at the apex of hurricane season, there is a tropical storm in the North Atlantic. Francine emerged in the Bay of Campeche, and has started to churn through the Gulf, slipping past the Texas Coast and is now churning towards the Louisiana Coast as a category 1 storm.
Francine is approaching the shore even now, and should landfall in central Louisiana this afternoon south of Morgan City. The storm is close enough to the coast, and generally small enough that the hurricane warnings don’t even cover the entirety of the Louisiana Coast, let alone graze one of their neighbors.
Before I go on, I do want to say that for the people this storm will impact, it will still come with dangerous winds, the threat of tornadoes and flash flooding in the locally heavy bands. That said, this storm is not nearly as intimidating as other hurricanes we have come to know in recent years. The storm doesn’t have the same strength, and is expected to clear Louisiana fairly quickly.
Storm surge is possible with any storm, but the southwest to northeast fetch of any surge will cause the impacts to be mitigated. The storm isn’t strong enough, and hasn’t had enough momentum to bring a lot of water with it, but also if it was stronger, the angle it is coming at is going to push moisture into relatively low population bayous.
And while rain bands will certainly provide localized downpours, the storm is going to be moving northward and out of the area relatively quickly, so those bullseyes will be just that – bullseyes, and not regional floods for all of southern Louisiana.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about Francine is where she will be going after landfall. Right now, the best projections have her following the Mississippi northward, unsteered by an subtropical feature, and free to meander northward, I’m sure Iowa hasn’t been expecting a tropical storm this year, but it is certainly not out of the question.
As always, heed all warnings and alerts as Francine makes her way inland, but also appreciate that she may be on her way towards being a memory by the end of the weekend.