Exclusive Analysis Of Tropical Storm Bertha As It Barrels Toward The Gulf Coast

[00:00:00]Uh it isn't necessarily the most picturesque tropical storm that we've seen. If there's a good thing here, although it's gotten stronger, the strongest part of the storm, the bad weather for the most part is over the Gulf.

[00:00:15]>> Yeah, definitely. It I mean it's an ugly storm and it because it's ugly, it's keeping the worst of the weather well away from the coast. Although there's still been a few cells, especially on the back side of it, that have moved north that have been pretty strong. Here you can make out the rotation up in here. We'll look at that more closely in just a second. But these are the big thunderstorms down here. You can see that they're pretty far from the coast.

[00:00:40]Although as we get to this evening, southeastern Louisiana down there, Blackman Parish, could experience some of this. He says 60 miles an hour.

[00:00:48]They're holding it at 60 miles an hour.

[00:00:50]Waiting for new data from the hurricane hunters. Northwest at five was an average direction. Now I think it's moving more like west northwest. And there's the pressure. We'll see what the hurricane hunters say here coming up.

[00:01:03]All right, look at this closeup. And there you can see the center rotating around right there. And you can see the direction is a little bit north maybe of due west. And down here are the big thunderstorms associated with it. This is generally dry air up in here.

[00:01:22]Although there's enough energy in this storm to produce some bands of showers, but the dry air is kind of soaking the energy out of them for the most part.

[00:01:31]Although a pretty significant one went by Tallahassee and up into South Georgia just a little while ago. So there is the squirrely track from this thing looping and carrying on and now it's on a more westerly direction. We'll get the analysis from the hurricane center coming up at 5:00 Eastern time, 4:00 Central. But here you see, look at the showers rotating around here. I mean, there's very little yellow even in there. There's the storm that went up by Tallahassee and up to Banebridge. Look, more coming in that line. So, these are the most active lines here behind the storm. Here you have so much dry air that you're not just not getting much onshore. All right. So, here's the cone and here's the idea on the forecast. The idea is that it begins to weaken. So, by tomorrow morning, it's 50 miles an hour down to 45 by the time it comes ashore in Louisiana um on late afternoon into the evening on Wednesday. But, as we saw, this large area of storms down to the south is going to precede it. So, southern uh and southeastern Louisiana may be affected by some of those tropical downpours and gusty winds well before this time here tomorrow evening. Now, as it goes by here, there there is that flow on the backside as you saw that's producing those cells that went up by Tallahassee.

[00:02:58]That's going to push the Gulf water up along the coast and we might get two to maybe four feet above normal high tide.

[00:03:06]Uh just keep that in mind. The biggest danger with the storm is right along the coast. Uh rip currents extremely uh big waves uh dangerous surf. So just bear that in mind all along the coast. Boers and anybody that might think about going to the beach because it's not completely terrible very close to the storm because of all that dry air. And then we continue on. Now, a little wrinkle this afternoon, Ian, is that the Google Deep Mind analysis that just came in actually keeps this thunderstorm complex here going over toward Texas here. So, we don't know what the top winds are going to be, but this may bring it in. So, we're a little This is a lot of uncertainty because it could unravel completely over Louisiana or because those thunderstorms are over the Gulf, the very warm Gulf, it kind of keeps some aspect of it going. So, we'll see.

[00:04:01]The Google model does indeed keep things going over this direction here. Now, what's causing this thing to weaken?

[00:04:08]Look at the flow in the atmosphere.

[00:04:10]There's high pressure over here, and it's just coming down like this, screaming down over top of it. So, it's like cutting off the top. It's driving dry air down into the circulation and that's just going to continue. So, the models here's a new set of models.

[00:04:24]They're a little farther south. So, we'll see if the hurricane center adjusts that now. And so, maybe that's why the Google model is seeing that and keeping this cluster of thunderstorms here down over the Gulf. And we'll see how that affects the overall storm because this is a lot of pressure being put on this storm. Uh so we'll see how it continues. Here you see the uh the consensus model. That's the main one we look at down the middle of the cone, but we'll see how this gets updated here later this afternoon. There's the Google one. As I said, that when it's over in here approaching with the center approaching Houston. The center is not relevant here, though. It's that cluster of thunderstorms with the stronger winds down to the south. So that's going to be down toward Victoria and on down the coast. We'll see exactly what the orientation is. Anyway, we're going to keep that in mind for later in the week.

[00:05:15]This is going to be in the Thursday Friday uh time frame. There you see all the models together. And you see that the uh AFS model, that's the European AI model. It's kind of been thinking this for a long time. So that's uh performed pretty well in this storm. So we'll see.

[00:05:30]The regular European model looks do all squirly here. Kind of dyes the storm out in here. And a lot of the Google model uh runs do as well. So the kind of two possibilities. one it dies out over Louisiana, the other enough of it keeps going that we get a pretty good thunderstorm complex heading in the direction of the Texas coast late in the week. So, here's our confidence. Our confidence is uh takes it into southeastern Louisiana. After that, we have lower confidence here. This is about the center, though. Remember, if that's the center line, then the bad weather is down to the south. when you're thinking about where this might affect on the Texas coast would be south of the Houston Galveastston area between Houston Galveston and and Corpus and obviously busy coastline there and we'll with more kind of gusty winds and strong um cells of tropical downpours, that kind of thing. if that all hangs together. But it's hard to say when it interacts with land. The whole thing could could just come apart with all that uh dry air. We'll know more as we get a little closer here uh tomorrow with landfall looks like late tomorrow or late tomorrow afternoon or early tomorrow evening.

[00:06:44]>> Yeah, Brian. Second half of that journey starts to get a little interesting. The consensus versus Google deep mine.

[00:06:50]That's like a Celtics Lakers thing going on there. two great but uh slightly different opinions and I know messaging wise for the NHC they're saying we need to make sure that folks in Texas know that whether this is a tropical storm at that point or not there could be some impactful weather. So be curious to get the thinking from the National Hurricane Center coming up at 5:00 pm and and we we'll see you then Brian we'll uh we'll go through some of those latest details together. That's our hurricane specialist Brian Norcross. Thank you.