Tracking storms as Flash Flood Warning issued for Jefferson, St. Charles parishes

[00:00:02]All right, good morning y'all or good afternoon rather. It is 308 here. Wanted to bring you a quick update. A flash flood warning has been issued for parts of the New Orleans metro. This is going to include mostly Jefferson and St. Charles Parish at the moment. That's at least where the heaviest of the rain is currently falling. We are getting some pretty hefty rainfall rates right now as these heavy showers do start to approach the metro. So, just an early heads up here that we are likely going to start to see at least some street flooding, especially in the St. Charles and the Jefferson Parish areas. This flash flood warning that was just issued by the National Weather Service is going to run officially until about 6:00 p.m. So, we've got a fairly lengthy flash flood warning here uh to make sure that all these showers and storms are eventually going to come to an end, but this is what we're tracking right now. So, again, it is 309. A new flash flood warning has just been issued for the St. Charles and Jefferson Parish areas.

[00:00:55]We've already picked up about half an inch to an inch of rain in some of these spots. And we do expect probably one to three to maybe four inches more if this thing doesn't move terribly quickly. And unfortunately, we're not getting a whole lot of movement. Things are moving, but I think some of these heavier storms are traveling over some of the same areas this afternoon. So again, just a heads up if you live in St. Charles Parish or Jefferson Parish this afternoon. There is a risk for street flooding right now and that threat is going to be increasing. By the way, these heavy showers are going to be moving into Orleans Parish fairly soon. We are not under a flash flood warning in Orleans Parish right now, but I do think we will probably see Orleans Parish added to this as this downpour continues to move out over uh parts of Jefferson and now into Orleans Parish. So, the remainder of your afternoon here, probably the next two to three hours are looking rather stormy here on the Southshore and um we'll be watching out for street flooding. There is a low risk for some gusty winds, maybe a spin- up tornado, but the primary threat will be for street flooding. up on the Northshore.

[00:01:53]Not a whole lot of heavy rain anymore, but we do have some light rain that does continue. So, that is the latest as of 3:10. We're going to continue this discussion of the flash flood warning streaming on our WWL app. You can pull that up on your smart TV or you can pull it up on your cell phone here and we'll continue to cover. But again, at 3:10, a flash flood warning has been issued for Jefferson and St. Charles Parish until 6:00 p.m. We are watching for some street flooding. We're going to send you back to your basketball game right here on CBS. We'll continue this discussion streaming on our WWL app.

[00:02:24]>> This has been a severe weather alert from WWL weather sponsored by Higen Botham Insurance and Financial Services.

[00:02:41]And thank you for continuing here streaming on your WWL app, on all of our platforms as we track some heavy rain.

[00:02:46]Here we go again moving through southeast Louisiana. Right now, the biggest concern is a flood risk that's developing across the New Orleans metro.

[00:02:54]As we see it right now, the flash flood warning is in effect for St. Charles and Jefferson Parishes. I'm going to zoom in here so you can see exactly what this looks like. A lot of heavy rain, especially over St. Charles and now getting into portions of Jefferson Parish. Right over Kenner, we've got some very heavy rain. We also have heavy rain that's sitting closer to Desteran, up towards Norco as well. And uh it's not raining as hard in Luling and Bouty, but it's right there across the river once you cross into Destraham that the heaviest of the rain does pick up. That flash flood warning does extend into Kenner and Meerie as well. And that is going to run until 6:00 p.m. this evening. So, this is a fairly long um duration flash flood warning that is currently in effect for Jefferson Parish this afternoon. Orleans Parish is not currently included in this flash flood warning, but I do think parts of New Orleans is going to see some street flooding here if this continues on its current path. And we're seeing that heavier rain try to build into Orleans Parish right now. So, not currently included is Orleans, but I think we could see that added here in the in the next 30 minutes to an hour or so, depending on how this uh heavy downpour does continue to boot. Our rainfall rates do continue to be extremely high in these downpours. The past couple of days, we've had all this remnant moisture left over from what was tropical storm Arthur. Well, we still have a lot of that remnant moisture left over. We have boundaries everywhere, these little outflow boundaries and surface boundaries and all that is our concern for some flooding. And by the way, the rainfall rates we're seeing right now in St. Charles Parish and Jefferson are quite high. So, I can clock them here. That rainfall rate you're seeing over there in St. Charles Parish, closer to the Destran area or just north is going to be close to 3 to 5 in in an hour. So, not saying it's going to rain 5 in, but if it rains for an hour there at that rate right now, you pick up 3 to 5 in. Over in Jefferson Parish, those rainfall rates not as high, but they're still pretty impressive. I think we're approaching 2 to 4 in an hour in some of those spots that are over in JP. So, if you live in any typical floodprone areas in JP, in Jefferson, uh over in St. Charles, please make sure you get that car into the safe spot, get it to higher ground, and make sure uh you don't have to deal with any of that mess um should that water start to collect. But again, a flash flood warning is in effect for Jefferson and St. Charles parishes until 6:00 p.m. We also have some very heavy rain that's currently sitting um over the lake. We've got a heck of a downpour. But then over here in South Mississippi, unfortunately, I've got some heavy rain that's moving through parts of Hancock County and anywhere from Purlington up through Bay St. Louis and just around I 10 there, Bay St. Louis to Wavelin, you've got some very heavy rain that's moving in. These areas have seen the most rain over the past couple of months. And so the ground is just extremely saturated. Our rivers are still very swollen over there in South Mississippi. And so it won't take much to get extra street flooding and it won't take much to get some additional river flooding. Now, the rivers have been cresting over there and dropping in South Mississippi today, but any additional rain obviously is not going to be helpful to that. So, as we go throughout the remainder of your Saturday, I do think you can expect some of these downpours around. Now, the flood risk is not off the charts like it was a couple days ago with uh Arthur moving through, we are going to watch breaks in the rain. That'll help here and there, but these downpours are tropical in nature and they're going to produce quite a bit of rainfall. We do still have a flash flood warning that's also continues over in Harrison County, Mississippi. We uh are luckily seeing big improvements and things slowing down there at the moment. So, we'll get some time to drain some of that water off that was causing some flooding over there in Hancock or rather in Harrison County, Mississippi. But right now, my primary concern is St. Charles and into Jefferson Parish where this new flash flood warning has been issued. Um, not getting any big reports in at the moment. We'll wait and see if that changes, but at the moment, the one thing we are the the main thing we're watching out for will be that um that heavy rain over JP and St. Charles. Also, I should mention we've had some fairly gusty winds with some of these storms. These are outflow boundaries that are moving on through. So, you'll feel the winds pick up. Luckily, the um I think the tornado threat overall is rather limited with all this based on those outflow boundaries. So, anytime you get an outflow dominant storm, it's not really rotating. It's just sending winds out.

[00:07:12]So, that is good. Now, like we saw yesterday, you can get these little cells that set up along old boundaries and they drop these little brief tornadoes. But the chance of that always happening is going to be significantly low, but these are the little things that we do watch out for when we're talking about water spouts or weak tornadoes. But the primary concern certainly is going to be that risk for street flooding throughout the remainder of the afternoon. So, as it stands right now, they're um Oh, the weather service you're just talking about. It would not be surprising if that little storm near Hanville that we're tracking right now had a funnel with it or at least some type of rotation. And again, that's what we're talking about. You can see there that brighter color in this little uh etched area near Hanville probably or at least wouldn't be shocking to see if it does have a funnel with it. We can look at velocity here and uh what it looks like right now is yeah, these things certainly are more outflow dominant across the area. Again though, you can get these little areas of spin and they do produce some funnels and occasionally like yesterday in Arabie, they can produce these weak tornadoes. By the way, we uh an update here on our tornadoes that we've had confirmed so far. These are the tornadoes we've had confirmed. Nine, in fact, most were on Thursday morning, but we had that one yesterday in Arab. So, that's the latest update with our tornadoes. We had a confirmed tornado Friday in Arab. That was an EF0. You can see there with 85 mph winds, but numerous other tornadoes had been confirmed now from Thursday morning when we had all those storms blow through with Arthur. Home area had four confirmed tornadoes ranging from EF0 to EF1. The strongest one in Homa produced a 95 mileph estimated winds. We had the three tornadoes in the metro area Thursday and between Thursday and Friday. Then Aendale one. We had the one move through New Orleans. That was an EF1 and an EF0 in Arab yesterday. And the strongest tornado we've had so far confirmed was in the Slidell area. This was primarily down towards the Wrigley's area and going up towards Avery Estates.

[00:09:11]That was an EF1 with 105 mileph winds that lifted up towards the Pearlington and Logtown area. And then we had that storm reproduce a tornado once it got closer to the Harrison and Hancock County line that produced an EF1 that was mainly north of the kill and then it moved up towards areas in Lizanna over in Harrison County. So those were the confirmed tornadoes we had between Thursday, mostly on Thursday, and then that one yesterday in Arab on Friday. So it was a really interesting setup there where um we had nine confirmed tornadoes at the end of the day. And by the way, if you're watching in the Eden Isles area, they are still doing damage surveys. There was a large path of damaging winds. What they're trying to do right now is go through all that damaging wind and see if where the little isolated tornadoes could have been. Sometimes that's rather difficult to do. So, they're still doing some surveys around the southern south part of Slidell and into uh Eden Isles. So, again, if you're just joining me here on your streaming on your WWL app, a flash flood warning is in effect for areas around Hanville, over in St. Charles Parish. That goes over into Kenner and Jefferson and Mey as well. It also goes down towards portions of the West Bank towards Aendelle and West where we're picking up some very, very heavy rain this afternoon. These heavy downpours could easily lead to some street flooding um in those typical lowlying spots. New Orleans right now, we're doing okay. We're going to watch these storms. I do have them with some movement into the metro area. So, as I put this in motion, I do think some of these sails that are over Lake Salvador and the West Bank may try to work into New Orleans here in the coming 30 minutes to an hour. So, if you're out and about, you're probably going to get some heavy rain at times and you may see some street flooding if the heavy rain lingers so long. So, that's where we stand right now. Our little flash flood warning till 6 p.m. in St. Charles and Jefferson Parish. We will keep you updated through the remainder of the afternoon streaming on our app here or over on channel 4 should things get a bit more serious. We will have our latest newscast coming up here uh after the 5:00 hour. There's a game going on right now, so it may get delayed some, but that'll be our next update on air.

[00:11:08]And we'll have the latest on river levels, damage reports, um inde damage cleanup that does continue across the area following those tornadoes from the past couple of days. Thank you for joining me here on your WWL.