Tropical Storm Bertha Brews Off The Gulf Coast As It Nears Landfall

[00:00:00]Well, Bob, we see a weakening storm and it is just about this afternoon it's going to make landfall in extreme southeastern the northeastern part of of Louisiana near the Mississippi line.

[00:00:13]We'll look at that in detail in a second. You can see 45 mph winds now as the winds are winding down in this big circulation. Moving a little more westerly, so west-northwest at seven.

[00:00:23]Pressure coming up as the overall system weakens. So, here you see the line. This is the track line. So, this right here is the system. I'll show you a close-up of it in a second. But, we also have this huge complex of thunderstorms down to the south. We're going to talk a lot about that forming on the uh sort of southwestern flank of this uh big circulation. All right. Look at a close-up here and there you can clearly see the uh system is still rotating. I mean, it's still a coherent system. And it's Here's New Orleans over here. It's just south of Lake Pontchartrain. So, already the winds here are coming around over Lake Pontchartrain. So, that's pushing the water against the southern end of the lake, so there will be some water rise there. Of course, there's uh plenty of protection there on the north side of the city of New Orleans, so that's not an issue there. This area in here where Lake Pontchartrain comes into Lake Borgne, this is Lake Borgne here.

[00:01:16]This is called the Rigolets right here.

[00:01:18]And I don't know where the land starts there in Louisiana, you know, cuz it's all kind of a a bunch of marsh over in this area. Like, nobody lives up in here. So, we'll see when they actually declare landfall it's when the center of this circle uh let's say the center is somewhere around right there, right? So, I don't know. Something like that. So, it's close to this marshy area, but is that landfall? It might be. It's on the map, but certainly nobody lives out there, so we'll uh we'll see when they actually declare it. But, looks for all the world like it's coming in right up here across Lake Borgne and Lake Pontchartrain. So, at some point very soon we'll get landfall declared. But, on the backside of this system is where the strongest winds are. Here on the front side, the New Orleans side, this is where relatively weak winds are, although there there are some gusts up to just about the tropical storm strength, but isolated areas on the backside actually have more wind. Here you see on the radar, notice there are no real yellows, big yellows, or reds getting no real strong downpours. Occasionally, you make out a little one right in there, one went by, right? A couple over New Orleans, but generally, it's so dry that you have the circulation in mostly dry air. The The strongest cells are well offshore, some back in here, out of radar range, so we can't see them. And then there's that big one down here that we can see for a long way from the Hammond, Louisiana radar. There you see it. And exactly what's going to happen with that is a bit of an open question, so we're going to dive into that in just a second. All right, here's what the winds are doing right now. Look, still gusting to 37.

[00:03:03]Remember, gusting over 39 is tropical storm force, or 40 and above if you're actually looking at a whole storm.

[00:03:11]Uh so, we're getting up close there, Shell Beach, which is east of New Orleans there on the Gulf, 35 mph. So, anyway, it's still pretty gusty out there. The thinking is that it will come ashore and by this evening be just west of New Orleans there, maybe peak winds of 45 mph, likely out over the water, not over the land, but it is going to be a gusty afternoon and evening there in New Orleans, as you would expect, but but not a threatening situation because the everything is kind of dried out, just a little bit on the gusty side.

[00:03:47]Then, it's a big question exactly what happens because does this system here completely survive or remember that big cluster of thunderstorms that was down here? That does that tug it farther south? It's it's really unknown at this point, but in general, what's left of this is going to come west and impact Texas. I don't I use impact with a small I cuz I'm not thinking any kind of big deal impact.

[00:04:16]You see the Hurricane Center is forecasting 40 mph winds. So, there are the models and see the models are interesting because the Google deep mind model goes right there, right down the middle of the cone and kind of dies out the system. So, the Hurricane Center is right along that line, but the other models kind of get get sucked in by this cluster of big cluster of thunderstorms and have trouble figuring out where the low pressure is and so they lean and kind of compromise between taking it kind of due west and dying it out and and latching on to that big cluster of thunderstorms. So, we're not going to pay too much attention to that, but you can see it on the consensus, everything is is the same pretty much and then kind of tapers down here as this low kind of heads over this way. Now, we can see it here on this half model and this model is made by NOAA especially for hurricanes. So, uh we're not going to look at the precise details here, but it'll give you an idea because it's representative. Look, we have we said all the the bad weather is on the backside or the strongest winds. I shouldn't say bad weather, strongest winds are on the backside of the storm, very little on the front side. Well, this is reflected in the model, so it has the idea right here. Okay, so here we are uh this afternoon, 1:00 Central, 2:00 Eastern time. Going forward, goes forward south of uh New Orleans uh just like we talked about. Uh so, here we are 7:00 this evening. This is where the Hurricane Center has 45 mph winds, but notice down here this cluster and some kind of little low pressure and I don't want to say it's another tropical storm. That's not correct. But it's you can see there's a big oval here of winds as some of that energy kind of gets transferred south. So or that clump of thunderstorms and the remnants of Bertha kind of are going to move together. So here they go moving over and then and you notice they kind of pick up with the little yellow, but now by tomorrow morning it's mostly red. So we have it just fringing the coast up in here. That's why we have tropical storm warnings. And then we go to tomorrow late afternoon and you notice some winds at the coast here. So this is why the Hurricane Center has that tropical storm watch down to Sargent. Sargent's right in between Corpus Christi and Galveston.

[00:06:32]So they have that there just in case. So this model reflects that just bringing wind up the coast. Not really a tropical storm. Sort of a combination of the remnants and the thunderstorm complex looking for some gusty winds along the Texas coast um by tomorrow as this thing moves in. As far as the rain, look at the rain. It's mostly in the Gulf and then the system is weakening as it gets over here by Texas. So not really expecting a lot of rain. Could use the rain down here in South Texas and along the coast. Actually it's been quite dry, but uh not expecting get much with this.

[00:07:07]So it's a kind of a weird combination thing. Bob, well we don't think that this is really anything significant.

[00:07:14]It's just unusual to have two entities to talk about and kind of the remnants of both of them are going to be what affects Texas tomorrow it looks like right now. Bob.

[00:07:25]>> It is fascinating too and I've been saying it before. I can't remember a a drier tropical storm that's been hugging the coast. Can you?

[00:07:34]>> Yeah, not often you know. I mean normally the tropical storms come and go in my memory bank, but uh but yeah, just moving parallel to the coast like this.

[00:07:43]Yeah, it's um it's unusual. You know, there was that that Hurricane Barry back in 2019. We're talking about that yesterday. Uh that that really was kind of dried out on one half of it, but it headed in. You know, that it didn't like parallel the coast >> Right.

[00:07:59]>> where you had uh just wind on and and light showers over the land like we've had with this one.

[00:08:05]>> Yeah, I love it. And I I I love this listening to you trying to explain it because it is hard to decipher. Two different spots that we're watching. But great great report, Brian. Thank you so much. He's our hurricane expert for a reason. He's our specialist. Brian Norcross, thank you so much.