Yesterday evening Francine made landfall as a category 2 hurricane down near Terrebonne Parish Louisiana. It had sustained winds of 100mph. There was a lot of flooding and wind damage across parts of Louisiana. Some of the video coming in is eye opening. As expected the storm has rapidly weakened since then. It is now already down to a tropical depression.
However, as you can see, there are still some strong wind gusts down that way around the center of the storm. Heavy rain was pushing north. New Orleans has picked about 8 inches of rainfall in the last 48 hours.
They are expecting more heavy rain to push up into Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee today.
They really need the rain down there. So in the long run it will be a good thing. Francine will track north today, and the winds will continue to slowly taper off.
By tomorrow it should just be a weak area of low pressure. The rain showers and thunderstorms will become more scattered.
The remnants of Francine will then drift around the Tennessee River Valley for a couple of days, but the showers will be scattered around the faint low.
There’s more to talk about in the tropics. In the eastern Atlantic there is tropical depression 7. This is on the way to becoming tropical storm Gordon very soon. It will steadily move to the west/northwest over the next few days.
The models are in pretty good agreement as to the track for the next couple of days.
After that there is quite a bit of uncertainty. However, I’d say that the odds are decent that it will stay out to sea.
On top of that there are 2 other weak tropical disturbances east of the Lesser Antilles. These both have a low chance formation.
You are probably wondering about the yellow blob that is near the east coast! Well… That is for a potential coastal low that could form early next week. The models have been showing something forming there for the last few days. However, just in the last 24 hours the models have split a bit. The GFS still has the low forming and moving up into our region between Monday and Tuesday.
However, the European model doesn’t really have it anymore. It does have rain and maybe a trough, but it doesn’t have much wind.
There’s still a good amount of time before we get to that point. Stay tuned for updates.
Meanwhile, today we have high pressure to our northeast with a stationary front far to our south.
We’ll still have some nice weather today, but the humidity is definitely going up. Dew points are rising from the 50s into the 60s. With the increasing moisture we’ll have increasing clouds. Skies will be a solid partly cloudy. High temps will rise to the low 80s.
It will feel warmer with the extra humidity though. There will be a breeze out of the east at 8-12mph.
Tomorrow we’ll be even more humid. Dew points will get closer to 65.
They will stay that high through the weekend. We’ll have a mix of sun and clouds Friday with some isolated showers possible. We’ll have similar weather over the weekend. Each day will have a mix of sun and clouds with some isolated showers over southeast Virginia with a few more showers over northeast North Carolina.
There’s a lot of big events happening this weekend. At this point I’m cautiously optimistic that there will be decent weather.
The rain for early next week will depend on the details of that possible coastal low forming. We’ll have plenty of updates on it over the next couple of days. We really need some rain. So hopefully, we get at least something. Just no wind!
Meteorologist: Jeremy Wheeler