WEATHER

Francine Flexes In The Gulf

Tropics awaken…

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Last week, I reported on the historic lack of activity in the Atlantic tropical basin this hurricane season – a surprising development given the tropical armageddon forecasters swore 2024 had in store for us. Now, as if on cue, the tropics have awakened from their doldrums – although this early-September burst seems unlikely to move the needle on meteorologists’ wildly inaccurate projections.

What it will do, however, is create havoc in the Gulf of Mexico – including New Orleans, a city which still bears the scars of the costliest, deadliest hurricane to impact the continental United States in the 21st Century: Katrina.

Newly christened Tropical Storm Francine is unlikely to come close to Katrina in ferocity or fallout, but it is projected to intensify rapidly after forming off the coast of Mexico on Monday evening – posing any number of grave threats to the Gulf Coast.

In addition to triple-digit winds and more than a foot of rainfall, Francine is expected to generate a tremendous storm surge across the low-lying Bayou – which is already being blanketed by watches and warnings associated with the storm.

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As of this writing, the worst of Francine could draw a bead on New Orleans – with forecasts projecting the worst part of the storm to hit the city with a significant surge as its eye likely makes landfall somewhere near Morgan City, seventy miles west-southwest of the Big Easy.

Vermilion Bay and Lake Ponchartrain are expected to see significant storm surges – which will test the new $20 billion “hurricane risk reduction” system erected over the past decade-and-a-half by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE).

Intended to protect New Orleans for the next fifty years, the USACE system involved the erection or enhancement of more than 130 miles of levees, flood walls floodgates and pump stations in an effort to mitigate the risk of flooding due to storm surges and tropical rainfall.

The extent to which it will be put through its paces remains to be seen, but forecasters seem confident in the projected path of this system over the next day-and-a-half.

Slight variations in its path are expected over the coming 24 hours, but Francine is expected to strengthen rapidly over the warm waters of the Gulf as it approaches the Louisiana coast before weakening slightly just before impact due to elevated wind shear close to land.

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Count on our media outlet to keep tabs on Francine as she makes her way north toward Louisiana…

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UPDATE |

The latest on Francine…

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR …

Will Folks (Dylan Nolan)

Will Folks is the owner and founding editor of FITSNews. Prior to founding his own news outlet, he served as press secretary to the governor of South Carolina, bass guitarist in an alternative rock band and bouncer at a Columbia, S.C. dive bar. He lives in the Midlands region of the state with his wife and eight children.

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