NEWS 6 WEATHER LIVE | Tropical Storm Bertha Forms In The Gulf

[00:00:13]Hey, hey, hey.

[00:00:26]>> [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [snorts] [music] >> What is going on guys? It is a Monday night. Time for News 6 weather live at 9:30. Hope everybody had a great weekend of dodging just a few thunderstorms on the drier side in the central Florida area. The big news of the last couple of hours anyway if you're tuning in on the YouTube side of things and saw the thumbnail is that tropical depression 2 has now formed is now strengthened into tropical storm Bertha. So the second name storm of the 2026 hurricane season is here. It does not change a thing.

[00:02:45]This was all to be expected and it is going to stay pretty weak as it kind of skirts along the north Gulf Coast. So over the next 25ish minutes that we're hanging out together, we're going to talk some impacts for our friends along the north Gulf Coast, how it's going to impact us here on the dry earth side in Central Florida and then some of the meteorology about this on how this thing can stay so relatively weak even though it's going over jet fuel in the extremely warm uh Gulf right now. So hope everybody's doing well. I'm sure we're going to have a lot of new viewers on the chat room tonight on the YouTube side of things. Post in the comments where you're tuning in from. And if you want to make a nightly occurrence, we'd love to have you. We're live here every single Monday through Friday at 9:30.

[00:03:28]So, all you need to do is hit that subscribe button. Shout out to anybody watching as well on the free News Six weather app. So, here it is. Tropical Storm Bertha. It's hanging out in the northeast um on the northeast Gulf and it's still looking a little sad tonight.

[00:03:43]I mean, as you may expect, but there is a little flare up here. The center is right about where you saw that little last pulse up. The deal with this and we're going to get into some of the meteorology aspect. There's a lot of wind shear and acting on this. So, all of the thunderstorms, all of the weather really is being forced to the southwest side of the system away from land. So, this is maybe the best possible scenario unless we need some rain, which we do.

[00:04:11]Um, but we don't want to get the flooding rain and that's where that stuff is again clinging to the southwest side. Again, winds right now of 40 miles an hour. The pressure only down 1 millibar from where we were at the 5:00 advisory. So, again, this thing is not off to the races by any means. And, uh, it will go on a weakening trend shortly.

[00:04:33]As of the 5:00 cone, it is expected to subtly strengthen. Mobile is covering up the strongest part of this. And this is going to be pretty much when it's parallel uh to Gulf Shores, Pensacola, Gulfport, Slidel, like that is when it's going to be at its strongest at about a 50 mph tropical storm. So again, we are not talking about anything crazy here.

[00:04:57]We mentioned that last week that if it were to develop uh it would stay relatively weak because the atmosphere just is not conducive to supporting much in the way uh of strengthening. Um anyway, so back off to the west there towards New Orleans.

[00:05:16]Uh most of the trends keep it pretty much right within the center to the northern side of this cone. Uh we're going to take a look at that right now.

[00:05:25]But most guidance and the official forecast really have this thing petering out as it slides to the west. And the consensus with the modeling, except for that guy up there toward Atlanta, which it's not going to do, is to pretty much take it up to the northwest a little bit to get it closer to land and then maybe making the landfall somewhere south of New Orleans as again a low-end tropical storm with most of the weather over the ocean, over the Gulf. That's the important thing to know here and I'll show you that in just one second and some of the modeling coming up uh in just a couple of minutes. But there the modeling takes it again towards Galveastston, Houston, Lake Charles, but by that point it is likely a tropical depression or a remnant low. So there's not a ton with this one. And that's obviously a good thing with all the flooding going on in Texas, especially south central Texas. Uh it's a good thing that that is dissipating. Some more lines to look at.

[00:06:32]This one straight up does look like spaghetti. These are the European uh ensembles and most of them take it off to the north and west. There was a time yesterday where the Google deep mind which has been struggling this year. It did very very well last year with some of the storms especially the second half of the season. I've not been impressed with it this year though. It erroneously formed a storm off the east coast of Florida a couple weeks ago that didn't come into fruition. And it had a big southward jog at least 30 to 40% of its members that took it south of Louisiana like toward Corpus Christi and developed it into a hurricane. It is no longer showing that. Um everything is kind of in line now with it kind of going northwest and then riding into Louisiana and again keeping most of the weather on over the Gulf. Tropical storm watch in play here for coastal the coastal Florida panhandle. This is going to include Panama City. This is going to include right through Pensacola um toward Gulf Shores toward Gulfport, Pasigula, and then just to the east of New Orleans, Slidell. We are included in this tropical storm watch. This will likely go to a tropical storm warning tomorrow, but I think the reason why they've not really upgraded it yet, maybe they'll wait till 11 o'clock advisory coming out. Um, I think there's still some uncertainty as to how strong e I mean, even if it does produce tropical storm conditions even along the coast. It is a little gusty out there. It's nothing crazy. These are current winds and wind gusts. Uh, the wind gust is in the red block uh the red outline numbers there.

[00:08:28]you were gusting to near 30 miles an hour in Pine Island, 25ish in Horseshoe Beach and Cedar Key, 25 in Appalachiccola.

[00:08:36]But there is um but there is uh there is the spin that you see there right through No, tropical is definitely spelled right in the chat. I'm not sure where you're seeing that, but just double check. It is not spelled like that, Anthony. So, you can double check that. Um, so it's gusty out there. It's way below tropical storm force. It may approach that. So, here's the model wind gust.

[00:09:20]This is tomorrow afternoon.

[00:09:23]Appalachiccola, there is 38 mileph wind gust, 27 in Pensacola, uh 23 mileph gusts in New Orleans at the time. Um I will say here there is a storm surge watch and even with it being a a weaker system, there's a lot of onshore movement here. So that's going to be again I think a rise of 1 to two feet can be expected there in Appalachiccola um as we move into tomorrow afternoon.

[00:09:58]So that's going to be kind of the water being pushed in a little bit. This is not a hurricane. Again we have got wind gust of 40 miles an hour. So we're certainly going to see some movement of the Gulf coming in a little bit uh towards Steen Hatchee um Appalachiccola, Port St. go those areas parry as well.

[00:10:18]And then eventually we're going to watch this. Watch like how weak it gets.

[00:10:26]Still gusting to maybe 30 miles an hour.

[00:10:27]There's Wednesday evening at 6:00 and then kind of petering out further.

[00:10:34]So this is not going to be a huge wind deal. It's going to be gusty, still a little breezy, but I mean by this point it is all but dissipated. I mean, you can't even see it anymore on the model itself.

[00:10:46]Um, so that's the deal with that and some of the impacts. All righty, guys. I have to get my first break in. When we come back in just three minutes, I am going to go over some of the rainfall forecast when it comes to tropical storm Bertha right along the Gulf. And then we're going to get into some of the meteorology about what forces are kind of working against this thankfully to keep this guy girl on the weaker side. And I'll see you guys in 3 minutes.

[00:11:25][music] [music] >> [music] [music] [music] >> Hey, [music] hey, hey.

[00:12:22]>> [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] >> around. Green.

[00:13:49]>> [music] [music] [music] [music] >> By the way, we are taking a live look tonight in Alligator Point in the panhandle. Also, Siesta Key on the Gulf side and then Lockheart during the break courtesy of our friends at Weather Steam as we watch some of these, I don't want to call them rainbands, not really outer bands of this thing. not really that mature just yet, but we are watching some of the feeder bands or some of the uh kind of counterclockwise flow pulling in some of the tropical moisture there giving us some of the rain across the Florida peninsula and Florida panhandle part of the North Gulf Coast today. So, here is the rainfall forecast and here's the deal with what I was talking about before and I think this is the most perfect illustration where all of the weather most of the weather is going to occur when it comes to this system. So, you can clearly see the coastline here, and I'll get closer, but there's the bullseye of the rain. So, we're talking more than a foot of rain out over the water. Uh, the most rain is likely going to clip areas south of New Orleans because the center might come ashore closer to Gulfport, Slidel, or New Orleans. And then, as we talked about before, all the weather is south of the center. So that's where we could pick up 5 to 10 inches of rain on the extreme southern southeast corner of Louisiana.

[00:15:38]Everywhere else, even for us on a widespread scale, look at this. I mean, Gulfport to Mobile to Pensacola, 1 to 3 in maybe, and it should be pretty scattered. Uh there are some isolated higher numbers through here through the I 10 corridor between Panama City and Pensacola, but still things should be pretty tame with this. I think the biggest thing is minor storm surge tomorrow with that wind 40ish mileph gust pushing the Gulf inland toward the Big Band and parts of the Florida panhandle. Um and then as it skirts across the North Gulf Coast. So that's kind of where we stand there. And again, I think this illustrates it perfectly kind of the discombobulated nature of this storm. And that is the main reason why it's not going to be able to tap in to any of its to any of the ingredients that the surface, the ocean surface is going to uh is going to get it. I want to show you a couple of things here. And this model here, and by the way, the model that I'm about to show you is um one of the hottest models. So it it always blows it out of proportion for the most part. And it's not, by the way, so I think it has a really good handle on it. But this is the hurricane warf.

[00:16:55]Uh the new H uh new halves models are kind of replacing this one. But I want to show you where we were. This is 2:00 this afternoon. And this is what we have going on. So that red L marks the surface low pressure center. So right here, that was 2:00 this afternoon, 107 millibars. Let me bring the pink one out here so we can actually see it a little bit more. So 1,07 millibars, but see these wind barbs kind of turning like this.

[00:17:26]There's that another counterclockwise center right there. That's going to be uh in the mid- levels of our atmosphere.

[00:17:32]We're looking at the mid-level moisture here. So that's going to be in the mid-level wind direction. So that's going to be the midle low. For a tropical system to actually take advantage of the extremely warm water temperatures, the two of these need to be colllocated. So you need to have the circle basically on top of the circle vertically stacked as we call it. Right now that wind shear that is out of the north is kind of forcing it's it's separating the centers and it's pushing all of the moisture down in that direction. And that is why the storm right now is southerntherly loaded. The other deal that's going to happen over the next couple of days, watch what happens as we take this forward. This is going to be 4:00 a.m. tomorrow morning. That's 8:00 a.m. uh 8:00 a.m. Eastern, 7:00 a.m.

[00:18:24]Central.

[00:18:26]Look at what happens here. This is tomorrow afternoon. I think at this point it has a 996 millibar low. I mean, maybe if it's able to um if it's able to do some work overnight, typically these things will strengthen overnight given decent atmospheric parameters, which we don't typically have. Um what I'm still seeing here is there's the surface low pressure, there is the other low pressure, and now look at all this back here. All that brown and orange to a lesser degree on the northern side.

[00:19:05]That is dry air. And then watch what happens going forward. Like where like I don't know that it that it the model gets it right and takes the center like into the panhandle of Florida or anything, but it's just interesting to note. Look how much dry air is here. I mean, it's completely separated at this point. It's decoupled um as as we call it. So it's it's just all around. That is why even with water temperatures in the mid to upper 80s, it's just going to have time or not going to have time. It's just going to struggle every step along the way that we uh that we watch this thing go west.

[00:19:46]The only shot that it had was earlier.

[00:19:49]I'll show you the difference. Let me see if I can pull that up. This is the morning run of the Google Deep Mind and it too now only has a few members getting down in that area which are likely outliers.

[00:20:09]Most of them take them up and then it dies a very fast death as it comes ashore in southeast um Louisiana.

[00:20:22]So that's kind of the deal with that.

[00:20:26]And there's just too much. And I mean, you can actually see it right here. I think this is a really cool water vapor imagery. So we do have there's Bertha right there, obviously in the green. And then here's this dip in the jetream that's going to inject some drier air.

[00:20:43]So all that orange right there, eventually it's going to get caught up in the circulation. It's going to pull it in. It's going to choke it out. So I I just don't think there's a lot of room for significant growth. And with the way that the shear is oriented, most of the weather even is going to stay over the water.

[00:21:10]So again, I think might be able to touch 40ish mile gust, maybe a little bit higher. Appalachiccola, Port St. Joe, maybe Pensacola tomorrow, Mobile.

[00:21:23]But that is really it, I think, when it comes to Bertha. All righty, guys. Got to get my second break in. If you have any questions on Bertha or anything else, post them in the chat. Now is the time to sound off. And I am back in just three minutes.

[00:21:42]>> [music] [music] [music] >> Hallelujah.

[00:22:04]>> [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] >> Heat. Heat.

[00:22:55][music] [music] [music] Heat. Heat.

[00:23:19][music] [music] Heat. Heat.

[00:23:47][music] [music] [music] >> [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] >> already has some good questions. Melissa is [music] asking if this has any shot to turn around and come back to Florida.

[00:24:48]The answer to that is going to be no. Uh no shot for it to come back around. Um for sure. Mimi is asking about in this particular case he's is the rainfall will cause the most damage and not the winds. It's all of the I don't know if you're asking about this particular storm. I don't foresee much damage at all with this especially in the rainfall department because most of it does stay over the water. Um if you're asking in general it's going to be storm surge every time. Um that does the most damage along the coast inland. I mean, it's it's really everything.

[00:25:27]Wind, inland flooding, that's freshwater flooding, um, storm surge along the coast. But yeah, it it all depends. Each storm is different, and then the hazards kind of rear their ugly head as we learn more about the storm. So, it's kind of on a case-byase basis what's going to do the worst thing. Like Harvey, there was a wind component, but certainly that one dropped 60 plus inches of rain over Texas and water beat that one out. Um with Charlie that was a fastm moving one. Wind damage was the crazy big threat with that uh all the way through.

[00:26:02]Um Irma was kind of both. Ian was kind of I mean all when I say both like all three had storm surge, ridiculous wind, crazy rain inland up here. So it all depends upon what's going on with the storm. And um but all all of those hazards are bad for sure.

[00:26:26]Florida to Michigan sometime in the coming days for family reasons. What are the best? I have not looked at the weather up there.

[00:26:34]It should be dry. It should start to dry out.

[00:26:38]Um I don't know which way you're planning on if you need to go I 10.

[00:26:42]It'll be a little gusty tomorrow, but I mean, as far as the Florida Florida panhandle goes, um, or the Florida Peninsula goes, it should dry out, relatively speaking, over the next, uh, couple of days. So, the weather should be pretty quiet throughout the state of Florida. All righty, guys. I have to go get ready for News 6 at 10:00. If you are in the greater Central Florida area, keep it on News6 Plus. That is a free download, by the way. Um, that is coming up in just a couple of minutes. We're of course going to have the latest on this system, which we just had to dig deep down. Uh but what we didn't really get to talk about a lot in the show tonight was how this impacts Central Florida.

[00:27:21]And of course, indirectly, it's been bringing us thunderstorms throughout the course of the day. Directly, it's going to actually bring us drier weather through the middle of the week. So, I'm going to be talking about that coming up on News6 at 10 on News6 Plus. Download that. It is a free download. And I'm going to talk about that even further coming up at News 6 at 11. So, this is going to bring us some drier air, which is not what we want because rain chances are going to go down and things are going to bake again in the hot Florida July sun. So, I'm going to have that full forecast for you coming up in just a couple of minutes. If you are new here and like the show, uh we talk tropics of course and hurricane season and so if you're out of the state of Florida and interested interested in that, hit that subscribe button. If you are within the state of Florida, we also have a Florida centric view. We kind of got away from that because we went real deep into the tropics tonight. Um, but if you're anywhere in the state of Florida from Pensac Pensacola down to Key West, we got you covered. Hit that subscribe button and I'll catch you in the next show. Have a great night, guys. Be safe.

[00:28:23]Remember who you follow on social media.

[00:28:26]There's a lot of wild ones out there that go a little crazy sometimes. I'll catch you soon.