Hurricane expected to hit Louisiana

Tropical Storm Francine was strengthening in the Gulf of Mexico yesterday, drenching coastal Mexico and Texas on its way to hit Louisiana as a hurricane on Wednesday night, the Associated Press reported. 

“We’re going to have a very dangerous situation developing by the time we get into Wednesday for portions of the north-central Gulf Coast, primarily along the coast of Louisiana, where we’re going to see the potential for life-threatening storm surge inundation and hurricane-force winds,” said Michael Brennan, director of the US National Hurricane Center in Miami.

Heavy rain was already falling in northeastern Mexico and deep South Texas, where some places could get up to 12 inches into Monday night, Brennan said. By early Monday afternoon, the hurricane centre said the storm was becoming stronger and better organized.

Francine is taking aim at a stretch of coastline that has yet to fully recover since hurricanes Laura and Delta decimated Lake Charles, Louisiana, in 2020, followed a year later by Hurricane Ida. Over the weekend, a 22-storey building in Lake Charles that had become a symbol of the destruction was imploded after sitting vacant for nearly four years, its windows shattered and covered in shredded tarps.

The storm surge pushed by Francine could reach as much as 10 feet along a stretch of Louisiana coastline from Cameron to Port Fourchon and into Vermilion Bay, forecasters said. And if the current track holds, the storm could blow northward up the Mississippi River, into the Illinois area by Saturday.

“Francine is expected to bring multiple days of heavy rainfall, considerable flash flooding risk,” Brennan said.

Louisiana officials urged residents to immediately prepare for the storm while “conditions still allow” for it, Mike Steele, spokesperson for the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, told The Associated Press.

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