Watch live: Tropical Storm Bertha forms

[00:00:00]financial services.

[00:00:02]>> All right, and good evening. I'm chief meteorologist Chris Franklin. Do not worry, Survivor fans. I'm only going to keep you for a couple of seconds. Just to update you as of the 7:00 advisory, we now have our second name storm of the 2026 Atlantic hurricane season. Tropical Storm Bertha Hurricane Center says they with the thunderstorms near the center, but all removed to the south, they found support of 40 mileph winds. So that has thus upgraded it. Nothing else has changed. We are not anticipating much additional development. Winds right now at 40 mph. At its peak should only be around 45 m an hour. As we go later into Wednesday and then Thursday beyond, already weakening. So during the day tomorrow, it's going to slowly meander.

[00:00:49]Basically where it is right now, finally starting to move westward by Wednesday, moving over coastal Louisiana or South Louisiana into Wednesday. by Thursday, quickly moving away. The heaviest of the rain should stay down to our south.

[00:01:02]We're going to update all of those potential impacts on our streaming app WWL. You can join us there. But otherwise, we'll send things back over to Survivor.

[00:01:12]This has been a severe weather alert from WWL weather sponsored by Higen Botham Insurance and Financial Services.

[00:01:27]All right, and good evening for those joining us on the streaming app WWL uh WWL, don't call it Plus anymore. Thank you for joining us. An update on Tropical Storm Bertha now was not unexpected. We knew it would happen.

[00:01:40]Although when you look at some of the buoy data and I'm guessing hurricane hunters I didn't get to go and read the details of why they found or where they found the 40 mph winds because I was looking at some of the surface buoys near the center and none of them were supporting winds of 40 mph. So there may have went been one little burst of thunderstorms down to the south that the hurricane hunters found the 40 mph winds and that was enough to upgrade this to tropical storm. Again it was at 35 mph.

[00:02:07]All they needed to do was get up to 39 and it's now a tropical storm. As far as the track goes, that is not updated until we get new model runs and at 10:00 we will see if there is any adjustment in the track. What we're hoping is that the adjustment continues going south because as we've been saying, the center of the storm, yes, could pass directly over South Louisiana, but the heaviest of the rainfall is going to be on the south side and likely as we go later into Wednesday, well removed to the southern side of the storm. What we are waiting for is its steering current, something to get it moving. where it is right now is basically in between two upper level highs and there's actually a big upper level low sitting right on top of it. So at the moment there is nothing to really get the storm moving which is why you see that forward speed northwest at three basically not going anywhere.

[00:02:58]What we are waiting to happen is that the upper high starts building in from the west that starts to kind of you have this little um outcrop of the high kind of building in on the north side of the storm that begins pushing the storm down to the south. At the same time, the upper high is also moving it down toward kind of the wests southwest or southwest as we head later into Wednesday. So depending upon how much it's able to drift north before that motion toward the west would determine how far inland over southeast Louisiana the storm is able to get. The thinking right now is that once the high takes over that pushes the center of the storm farther south that pushes most of the heavy rainfall well down to the south and near the center is not going to be the worst part of the storm. What we also have working in our favor is this strong upper level dry air that is pushing across the northern Gulf. It is pushing into the center of the storm and keeping the storm weak kind of asymmetrical with all the thunderstorms on the southern side and should remain in place in the coming days. This is a look at the upper level dry air and where all the moisture is kind of near the center. This is Tuesday night. Look at as we head into Wednesday, even more dry air starts to push that moisture even farther offshore. So again, even if the center does push over southeast Louisiana that keeps the bulk of the moisture well down to our south. So even as the thunderstorm activity right now is currently just south of the center, it should be even farther removed as we go later into Tuesday and especially on Wednesday as the storm center is nearing the Louisiana coastline. Here's a look at our precision cast model. And again, not to say we will be completely dry, but the heaviest of the rain should be well removed to the south going forward into the future by Tuesday. Maybe a few little bands of showers and a few more as we head into Wednesday. But even our high resolution model not indicating much rainfall passing through. I've got us at kind of the most 50% on Wednesday with where all the heaviest is well off to the southwest of the storm. Again, that dry air and wind shear will keep this as a very sloppy storm through its forecast. And that is where most model guidance is indicating the bulk of the heavy rainfall is. Here's the center of the storm. Basically, just looking at the center line. The heaviest will be south and hopefully well removed to the south. that peak or that uh um kind of uh pocket of 10 to 15 inches of rain should remain well south of the Mississippi mouth of the Mississippi with inland totals of half inch maybe a few areas slightly more and certainly a few isolated downpours can produce higher rainfall totals those should be fairly limited the risk of flooding for both Wednesday and Thursday fairly low most of the area under the level one out of four and the immediate coast and south of the city under a level two out of four. So, better chance of some street flooding as you head down toward the coast and hopefully not the issue around the metro area, which we know it doesn't take much to see any flooding.

[00:06:10]This is what I was talking about. Look at the buoys that are near the center.

[00:06:14]None of them are showing wind supporting that of a tropical storm. So, the wind field, if there's much of it, is right near the center. And actually, the strongest winds are likely south within some of the strongest thunderstorms. And that will also be the case as the storm center approaches. We will get some gusty winds. It's definitely going to be a breezy to windy Tuesday night going into Wednesday morning and Wednesday.

[00:06:36]Here are some of the wind gusts during the day. Notice where the stronger wind gusts are. Not at the center, which would be typical of a tropical storm or hurricane. That's not going to be a hurricane, but it's not going to be near the center. They well they are well removed down to the southwest of the storm center because this is going to be so asymmetrical. so sloppy. The strongest of the winds are going to be push or the strong upper level winds are going to be pushing the strongest parts of the storm south of the coastline. As far as storm surge flooding goes, they're going to be right along the immediate coast 2 to 4 in and then just inland and even in the lake 1 to three kind of above ground level. So storm surge is going to be fairly minimal with regard to our approaching and then landfalling tropical storm. Again, this is not a typical system. We are not too concerned about the center because that is not going to be where the worst part of the storm is. The dry air wind shear, the upper level high should keep the worst of the storm offshore. We will watch to see what the model trend is before the 10:00 advisory. We will have a new cone at 10:00, but again reiterating, we now do have tropical storm birthday. As far as the impacts of southeast Louisiana go, they should be fairly minimal. We'll be watching this closely during the day. probably no major changes during the day Tuesday and by Wednesday once it finally starts moving our way, I think we'll have a far better grasp of the impact. So, we're expecting during the day Wednesday and improving conditions by Thursday and then by the weekend we're back to the hot and mostly dry weather. So, we'll update this information as of our 10:00 when the new information does come in from the National Hurricane Center. But for now, I'm chief meteorologist Chris Franklin.

[00:08:45]Heat. Hey, Heat.

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