Tropical Depression Two Churns In The Gulf Of America

[00:00:01]The Gulf of America behind me, Fort Walton Beach and Destin not too far away. We are watching this system tropical depression number two. Will it become tropical storm Bertha? We'll have to wait obviously to see what the National Hurricane Center says as they continue to send in hurricane hunters in the air and look at how this system is forming. But throughout the day today we have experienced squalls out in the Gulf actually quite beautiful with the turquoise water in the distance dark clouds and rain coming down. People running for cover off of the beaches, folks that were on vacation and then going back out as the systems moved on.

[00:00:42]But we shall see what occurs. Anyway you look at it this will not be a strong system if indeed it is upgraded to a tropical storm. But impacts, well, let's go over them real quickly. Look at this video from 2019 that I shot tropical storm moving into the coast of see impacts as intense as what you're looking at but the marshes and the bayous and the coastline of not only Louisiana but Mississippi fragile from the beating that they've taken over the years and centuries for that matter from storms coming in and millions of dollars have restored these. They've been working very hard and one of those places is the Chandeleur Islands. It's an uninhabited strip of land that acts as a speed bump and I recently visited there and have a watch.

[00:01:31]>> These are the easternmost lands in the state of Louisiana. These barrier islands are are important in so many ways.

[00:01:38]Specifically you mentioned about storm protection. They are the first line defense between our tropical storms, between our hurricanes. And they're helping protect not only our marshes but our metropolitan areas New Orleans and St. Bernard Plaquemines Parish.

[00:01:57]>> [music] >> The chain of islands is about 2,000 years old. It was created by the reworking of sediment deposited at the mouth of an ancient easterly course of the Mississippi River.

[00:02:10]>> These islands [music] provide a speed bump. They take off some of the surge and they definitely knock down the big storm waves. And so these islands are very dynamic, driven by storms.

[00:02:19]>> [music] >> And so the more frequent the storms impact the island, the more the uh sand is moving. And if there's [music] not much time between two storms, um that what happens is that the islands don't have time to recover.

[00:02:31]>> In recent history, major hurricanes have ripped apart the chain, including Andrew in 1992 and Katrina in 2005, which created a new cut separating the southern and northern ends of the islands.

[00:02:52]>> This chain of islands is incredibly important [music] for the community of New Orleans. Um this is a break for the storms when they come in. Uh and we're very concerned not just about Fish and Wildlife Service resources, but about coastal communities and the resilience of those coastal communities, which makes this island imperative to restore and have longevity beyond its current years if we do nothing.

[00:03:13]>> The importance of the barrier islands and a coastline that is shored up very, very intense. To do it cost a lot of money, a lot of manpower, and these storms that continue to come in every single year. They take away some of the work that has already been done. Now, places like Venice, Louisiana, 75 mi to the southeast of New Orleans, you know, if this system keeps trucking there, they may receive some of that surge and that inward push. Potential 2 to 4 ft.

[00:03:40]You know, that does affect uh some of the low-lying areas, which is pretty much everywhere in that part of Louisiana. We know New Orleans surrounded by water. It just takes a couple inches to start flooding uh streets and exploding sewers. So, we'll see how this goes uh and we'll see the next update from National Hurricane Center.

[00:03:59]Will Tropical Depression 2 become Tropical Storm Bertha?

[00:04:03]We'll have to wait and see. Reporting on Fort Walton Beach, I'm Robert Ray, Fox Weather.