Tropical Depression Two to become Bertha | KXAN Weather Forecast (July 20)

[00:00:00]We don't want anyone out on our waters right now too because white fall, we're seeing all of those floodgate operations still ongoing as well. We want to make sure we're practicing our water safety. Just stay out of it until those are reopened. But I also want to look at our activity we have happening in the Gulf. This is tropical depression two really starting to wrap around the western side now with the rain bands. We have not seen that until the late morning hours when it's starting to kind of come together a little bit more. It has been very lopsided until right now. The current advisory is still 35 mph sustained winds. But as it's starting to get more of that storm activity around the outside and it tries to build around the center, that's when you're going to see strengthening and we do expect this to become a tropical storm by even later today.

[00:00:54]There's tropical storm watches in effect from the Big Bend region of Florida all the way through the Panhandle, coastal Alabama, coastal Mississippi, and southeastern Louisiana as it gets pretty close over the next few days if not moving inland. And here's that cone.

[00:01:11]There's two scenarios that could play out here. The northern side of the cone and again this cone is the potential track for the center line of the storm there. So the impacts will spread outside of that but it could take a more northerly track inland in which case it would dissipate quite quickly or it could take a more southerly track and get stuck under upper level high pressure and that would be the greatest potential to see impacts in Texas. Right now the National Hurricane Center has been decreasing the forecast intensity.

[00:01:43]So it has the strongest point on Tuesday 50 mph sustained winds as a tropical storm and then weakening on Wednesday becoming a tropical depression again by Friday and into Saturday weakening even further. So, that indicates to me they think it's more likely going to at least skirt by the coast or be a little bit farther north. And that's a good trend for us because we'll see lower impacts if we see the moisture gets swept up to the north from this system.

[00:02:12]What happens is we have an upper level low up here over the Great Lakes. It tries to pull it up north. It's not going to get totally swept up away. That sometimes happens where they get pulled up into that low. It gets left behind, but the high pressure is what we were watching for potentially pushing it farther west into the Texas coastline, but most of the spaghetti models lose the storm altogether or when they do bring it west, it's on the weaker side.

[00:02:38]And you can see the tropical moisture here. It's pooling, but it's not really doing much. It's not a cohesive storm anymore. So, that's the good news. And if you look at the rainfall totals here, the bull's-eye for 10 in is offshore.

[00:02:50]Some coastal areas could pick up more, but the farther inland you get toward Austin, not expecting a significant amount of rain, but out of precaution, the weather prediction center has put out a level one out of four flood risk for our southeastern counties. So, we'll keep an eye on that. Our temperatures are going to heat up ahead of that underneath the high pressure. I think triple digits the next 3 days after today because we'll have some drier air mixing in tomorrow. The high pressure is right over us Wednesday, Thursday. And as we get that moisture coming in from the east, that's when we'll start to feel pretty hot. We might see some heat alerts even coming out by the later parts of the week. Here's a look at the Marble Falls camera. We were talking about the waters out there. It's very dirty waters. We want to make sure we're staying out of the lakes across the area. Lake Travis full 105% and falling. And then Lake Buchanan also at 100%. So, those floodgate operations will continue ongoing until we release some of that water. Temperatures low to mid-80s. We are going to feel like around 102 in the afternoon today.

[00:03:52]Again, I think the heat index will start to get worse over the next couple of days, especially by Wednesday and Thursday. Not putting rain chance right now on the weekend, but we'll keep an eye on that tropical system. Lot more cakes and [music] coming up after the break.