Tropical Storm Bertha appearing to be less a threat to New Orleans, models suggest

[00:00:00]Now, your first alert weather, from chief meteorologist Bruce Katz.

[00:00:04]>> All right, all eyes on the gulf and right now we have Bertha. It was named as of the 7:00 advisory and you'll notice as it's been drifting, kind of making a little loop-de-loop, loop-de-loop, kind of meandering the last few days, but it moved northwestward. Now it's taking a little jog southwest. Now the other thing is, we don't have any storms around the center. Most of the heavy rain is well south and west of the actual feature. On the western side we're seeing some storms moving in. Taking a look at radar from Shell Beach down to Port Sulphur, down Well, look at the Mississippi River, some heavy rain down to Venice and Boothville, down to the mouth of the river. So once again, Port Sulphur, La Hache, Delacroix, these areas moderate to heavy rain and then finally from Empire down to Boothville and Venice, some of those storms continuing to move southward. That's going to be the case over the next couple of days. Some rounds of rain, not raining all the time. We do have, of course, tropical storm watches in effect from Dauphin Island eastward and also that does include Bay Saint Louis and the eastern facing shores of southeast Louisiana down to the mouth of the river. On top of that, storm surge alerts anywhere from 1 to 3 feet coming in on the eastern edge of Lake Pontchartrain, 2 to 4 Orleans, also Saint Bernard down to Plaquemines and right near Waveland up in Mississippi. So here's what we're looking at. This was our daylight picture and I'm going to focus in a little bit closer in a moment, but here's your center and look at the big storms that are much farther south.

[00:01:28]We've got a ton of shear kind of pushing all the storms away from the center. As a result, it's exposed, meaning the center's there, but nothing is wrapping around it from storms. So, if everything is wrapping south and on the eastern side, at times you try and see a little bit of that movement wrapping around, it just can't because all that upper air activity is pushing this southward and southwest. So, as we take a look at the models, you know, several models now maybe bringing this a little bit farther south. We're going to be getting a new update and track coming in hopefully in the next 15 to 30 minutes.

[00:02:04]So, we will be updating that, but nevertheless, I mean, the models showing westward movement, but will it be much farther south in the Gulf or more toward Lafeite? I mean, that's a pretty decent distance. So, the model's not honing in within about a 30 to 50-mi area. So, still there's a lot of answers where that we don't know. Here's your upper high. This is going to be the main steering mechanism. Also, we have a ridge to the east. This one's going to move away. This will be the dominant one and eventually as it moves our way, it's going to take the storm off to the west.

[00:02:38]As we take a look, you can see that dry air pushing south. On top of that, look at the surge. I mean, just moving in.

[00:02:45]All this wind pushing everything south away from the actual center itself. So, here's your high. Right now, the system is kind of waiting for something to pick it up and likely it's going to be this high. The high begins to move off to the east. As it moves north of us, on the eastern side, we're going to begin to pick up that east and northeasterly flow and that will begin to push it off to the west and likely diminishing and dissipating by Thursday night and Friday south of Lake Charles. What about rainfall? Here's what we're watching.

[00:03:17]Here's your center. Bigger storms here and it may not look like a lot, but remember, you've got radars that can only shoot about 200 mi out. So, radars can't hit this far south in the Gulf.

[00:03:29]All this is extreme heavy rainfall.

[00:03:32]Showers and storms closer to radars.

[00:03:35]Here are the storms that we showed you coming into southeast Louisiana and that will be the case on and off as we see the rain chances as that system moves on by. So, once again, storms on and off tonight. Those begin to move southward and as we take a look at the model runs, this is our in-house graph model and I kind of like what it's doing. Farther south and west right now, movement.

[00:03:57]Tomorrow morning, notice dry air moving in from the north. As it begins to work off to the west, now it's putting it even a little farther south and west with the heaviest rain down south of the actual center. Here's what we're watching, some more spotty storms, but they move. That's a good thing. We're going to have to watch out if we see any training taking place on Wednesday, that would bring the threat of flooding. So, I'm not going to discount one or two areas of flood, but it looks like the worst of the rain 7:00 a.m. Look how far south in the Gulf it is as that storm is being just shredded by those upper winds and that shearing. Potentially moving south, we would see a lot of wind on Wednesday up to 30 35 up to 40 in gust.

[00:04:40]So, that could certainly take out power lines, but the biggest threat earlier the thinking could have been flood, now it looks like that's diminishing as the bulk of the activity stays down south.

[00:04:51]So, offshore 10 to 15 in.

[00:04:53]Right along the shore in south 5 to 10.

[00:04:56]Around Grand Isle heading over eastward toward the northern end of Plaquemines 2 to 4. In the metro, if it's 1 to 3, we can handle that. 1 to 2 north, 2 to 3 heading over toward the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Nevertheless, tomorrow yet another hot day. We were in the mid to upper 90s today. Right now still in the mid to upper 80s, and it feels like 102 at 9:36 at the lakefront. 96 at the airport in Kenner. High dew points, not a lot of wind right now, so that system really not influencing much, but Southwest Pass with the storm moving in at about 32. Your 7-day forecast putting out a first alert for Wednesday into early Thursday as we watch the Gulf.

[00:05:36]Pretty encouraged right now. I'm going to wait to see probably in the next 10 minutes the new update comes.

[00:05:42]I hope they push it further south. My thinking is they might do that, but nevertheless, the heaviest rain likely going to stay offshore. So, that is a definite blessing for us.

[00:05:51]>> longer that stays to be the the case, the better off we are, right?

[00:05:54]>> Without question. Not to say we're not going to get any bands of rain. We could get a little training, but it's not going to be a widespread swath of rain for hours that would flood us. Right now, we're looking good. I'm optimistic.

[00:06:05]I'm not going to write this thing off, but right now, I think we're going well in the right direction.