Lingering Effects From Bertha | First Alert Storm Team Morning Forecast 072326

[00:00:00]See you later.

[00:00:01]>> Now, meteorologist Caroline Carithers with your First Alert Storm Team forecast.

[00:00:08]>> Well, good morning to you. Here is the latest from Tropical Storm Bertha as of the 4:00 a.m. advisory from the Hurricane Center. It is now well to our west. It is spinning away over coastal Louisiana. It's got a west wind or west movement, I should say, at around 13 mph. So, starting to pick up that forward speed and still the rain, the clouds, the thunderstorm, the convection, all of that is well displaced from the center still to the south moving over Texas. Winds are still at an impressive 45 mph. I'm kind of surprised with the amount of land interaction that it's had. But, here's the latest track. It is expected to make land a probably a second landfall in Texas later on today before weakening pretty quickly over land later on this afternoon and into tomorrow. But, we still have some lingering effects even though Bertha is well to our west. We have gusty winds today. So, winds sustained are going to be around 10 to 15 mph, but we could see those gusts up to 20. We're already seeing that, especially near the coastline. In fact, at the coast this morning, we're seeing some gusts up to around 25 mph. So, just keep that in mind. It'll just be a breezier day, not as windy as yesterday, not tropical storm force, but certainly something that you'll notice. Also seeing that rough surf linger. Anytime there's anything in the gulf, it always takes a long time for the surf to settle down. So, Orange Beach on our Sweat Tires cam, you can see the waves crashing on the coastline there. Double red flags are still up this morning.

[00:01:31]We'll either be double red or red throughout the day today with a high risk for rip currents continuing. Those wave heights are still at around 5 to 6 ft this morning. So, starting to die down and they'll continue to die down throughout the day today, but still really, really rough surf really close to the coastline. So, we're talking about 5 to 8-ft breaking waves in the surf zone. That's why we still have that high surf warning in place through 3:00 p.m. this afternoon. We're also tracking another chance for coastal flooding this morning. Do you remember yesterday morning when we had high tide between 5:00 and 8:00 a.m.? That's going to occur again this morning, but the high tides are just going to be running 1 to 3 ft above ground level here. So, we are talking about coastal flooding a possibility again today and along coastal Alabama and coastal Northwest Florida. These are normal culprit spots, the same ones we likely saw yesterday, the Mobile Bay Causeway as well as Fort Pickens by Bayou La Batre, Coden, the Dog River Bridge flooded yesterday. So, still seeing those areas as problem spots this morning, especially during your morning commute. This actually runs until 10:00 a.m., which is after high tide starts to recede a little bit.

[00:02:38]Radar right now is mostly clear, although we are seeing just a few showers from the outermost rain bands continuing to rotate through our area.

[00:02:45]So, yes, a couple of those showers in Jackson County moving northward into Lucedale and then a couple fizzling showers in northern Mobile County.

[00:02:53]Today, this is how it's going to be, just a couple of those showers around, so a 20% chance that you need that green and Phillips umbrella. Temperatures are going to be pretty seasonal today. We're going to be near 90° as we head into this afternoon, but our next big weather story after Bertha finally gets out of our hair, it's going to be the heat. We are going to warm up very quickly through the weekend. We'll be in the mid-90s, but we're already looking ahead to next week. Next week is looking like possibly air temperatures near 99, 100°, and you know the heat index is going to be much higher than that. So, we are looking ahead to heat alerts starting possibly Sunday into early next week.