Tracking Tropical Storm Bertha: Southeast LA impacts and how it differs from Tropical Storm Arthur

[00:00:00]we've been asking people to send in their questions all day. What have you heard from them so far?

[00:00:04]>> Well, as you might be able to guess, we haven't gotten a lot about the actual weather impacts of Bertha because it ended up not really doing much in our area. Mostly the questions we've seen have been about the mitigation measures that parishes have taken like the possibility that, you know, government, parish, county in Mississippi, uh courthouses could be closed to tomorrow. And >> so far, I will say after looking at all of our coastal parishes and Mississippi counties, it doesn't look like any of them are planning on being closed tomorrow. However, in Terrebonne Parish, they were supposed to have a town hall tonight in West Houma. That has been canceled. So, I would say that probably is the biggest impact in terms of, you know, parish >> Mhm.

[00:00:52]>> uh >> Right.

[00:00:54]>> functioning so far, but besides that, really not a whole lot. But that being said, we did have a few questions about the weather. So, Alexa, >> Mhm.

[00:01:02]>> two different people texted us asking about the river parishes. Someone asked us about LaPlace, someone asked us about Gramercy. What can you tell us about the impact there? We haven't heard a lot about it so far.

[00:01:11]>> You know, the rest of tonight into early tomorrow, we're going to have some passing showers, but insignificant. Not expecting flooding rain. It's going to be windy the rest of tonight into early tomorrow, too. We'll have strong wind gusts in the river parishes up to maybe 30 to 40 mph at times. So, it's going to be windy. We'll have some passing showers, but we could also have some minor coastal flooding along the lakefront in the river parishes of up to maybe 1 ft. So, it's not going to be anything significant, but if there are any of those low-lying roads in the river parishes because that's outside of the hurricane risk reduction system, there could be some minor overwash, some water getting onto some of those roadways, those more susceptible areas.

[00:01:48]There is a coastal flood advisory in effect for the river parishes until tomorrow morning because we hit high tide again tomorrow morning. So, actually tonight, things should be a little bit better when it comes to coastal flooding really across the entire area because we're getting into low tide right now, but we'll see high tide come up early tomorrow, so we'll have to watch for more coastal flooding across the entire area, but it will be a lot less for Lake Pontchartrain including the river parishes. It will It will be a little bit more for our coastal spots going into the rest of today into tomorrow.

[00:02:16]>> Okay, so some impacts to watch for overnight, but nothing >> Nothing Nothing extreme. Not at all whatsoever.

[00:02:21]>> And so, the other thing that we've been seeing a lot of chatter about on social media and that we've gotten a few questions about is tornadoes because during Arthur, we expected that to not be that bad of a storm either and it ended up being this pretty major tornado outbreak in our area. So, why haven't we seen that same thing happen with Bertha?

[00:02:39]>> It really comes down to one thing and that's wind shear. So, if you can remember back in June with Arthur, the storm was also sheared and when you get that wind shear, all of the impacts get pushed away from the center of the storm. So, if you remember back in June, the center of Arthur made landfall in Texas, but all the impacts got blown towards us. We had a huge complex of storms that came across Louisiana and Mississippi and it led to a massive tornado outbreak and massive flooding for many of us across Louisiana and I wanted to show you a look at the graphics right now because shear is also working on Bertha, but it's working in our favor this time. This time the wind shear is pushing all of the storms away from us and pushing it into the Gulf. I actually want to show you what that looks like right now. All of the storms, that's what it looked like for Arthur, but it was right over on top of us, but now this is Bertha and all the storms are just sitting in the middle of the Gulf. Thank God that's not over us because we'd be dealing with the same stuff that we dealt with with Arthur, but yeah, that's really the big thing is wind shear was not our friend the last time. Wind shear is our friend this time because it pushed the storms away from us, but with Arthur, it pushed the storms towards us. But also, wind shear is good because it kept the storm weak.

[00:03:51]We keeps us just down to a tropical storm level. So, shear can really play an impact on storms. It can rip storms apart. It can weaken them. It can also push the impacts either towards us or away from us. And thankfully, it pushed it away from us this time with Bertha.

[00:04:03]>> All right. Thank goodness for that one shear this time. Thank you, Alexia.

[00:04:06]Katie?

[00:04:07]>> All right.