Hurricane Francine has officially made landfall as a Category 2 hurricane, hitting Terrebonne Parish at around 5 p.m. Wednesday evening.
The storm is still about 30 miles southwest of Morgan City and has sustained winds nearing 100 mph, moving northeast at around 17 mph.
Unfiltered with Kiran sat down with Louisiana’s State Climatologist Jay Grymes to get the latest information on Hurricane Francine and its current conditions.
While those winds are whipping at high speeds, Grymes expects the storm to accelerate as it moves further inland.
“Winds are running around 100 miles per hour or so. That should subside pretty quickly. However, it’s also moving a little faster than we thought it would,” Grymes explained. “I was thinking it would come in at about 15 miles per hour. Looks like it’s doing about 17 (mph). Now you might say, what’s the difference? Well, the thing is that it’s probably going to continue to accelerate as it moves inland, which means we could see some of those hurricane-force winds and tropical-force storm winds get a little deeper than we thought they would.”
There could be more rainfall than initially expected, given the intensity of the storm Grymes said. Residents in the river parishes should also be especially mindful of potential flooding.
“For places like Tangipahoa, Washington, and St. Tammany Parishes, all of those rivers are going to go into flood. For folks concerned about Tickfaw and Amite, you’re going to get close to flood stage, but if it does flood there, the flooding will probably be relatively minor. It will be the kind of high water that most people around those rivers are relatively accustomed to,” Grymes said.
Accelerated wind speeds are also expected to move further inland than some climatologists originally anticipated.
“I think we could see hurricane force winds make their way all the way in as far north as lower Livingston Parish, so that’s a pretty good chunk, not as deep as what happened with Ida, but it’s still further inland than I thought we were going to see those winds get,” Grymes explained. “We could see wind gusts in the 50s in the Baton Rouge metro area briefly and gusts could get well up into the 60s for Metro New Orleans.”
Grymes said he expects the majority of rain tied to the storm to move out of the area by sunrise Thursday, which he said was good news.
The storm could also be expected to move slightly further east as it makes its arrival across the state, which Grymes said would be a good thing for Metro Baton Rouge but could impact other areas, especially around the north shore with high winds and potential tornadoes.
“The more east it goes, the worse it is for Metro New Orleans and folks in and around the Hammond area,” Gyrmes noted. “So far looking at the radar, the banding patterns haven’t set up real intensely yet but I think once the center gets overland, we’ll start to see those bands coming together. And the banding pattern will be such that if were to draw a line basically from Hammond south to Houma, anything to the east side of that line, that’s where I think we’ll have the greater potential for some quick spin-up tornadoes. It’s not critically dangerous but with a tornado, it only takes one or two to be a real problem and potentially deadly.”
While Grymes said the goal isn’t to make anyone panic, he wants people to be prepared and vigilant, especially in places like Hammond.
“Certainly we’ve had much more significant storms roll through here. Ida left a much bigger footprint than this storm will, but for those people that get impacted, it doesn’t matter how big it was. For some people, this is going to be a personal catastrophe,” Grymes said. “It may not be widespread but there are going to be folks out there that are really going to get hurt by this storm.”
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