Storm surge piles ashore in Louisiana as Hurricane Francine strikes Louisiana

Storm chaser Aaron Rigsby reported live from Dulac, Louisiana, on the afternoon of Sept. 11 as Hurricane Francine began to slam into the Gulf Coast.

Transcript

00:00We want to take things over to storm chaser Aaron Rigsby, who is live from Duloc, Louisiana.

00:08Now, Aaron, it's looking like things have started to ramp up since we last checked in with you.

00:16Yeah, good afternoon. That's absolutely correct. We're starting to see some of those outer bands

00:21of the eyewall starting to come on short. And with it, it's starting to bring a lot

00:26more gusty winds. We're starting to see winds gust to 40 to 50 miles per hour,

00:31and it's only going to continue to get worse here over the next several hours.

00:34Now, right here behind me, this is actually supposed to be a street,

00:38and the storm surge that we've been talking so much about and how prone this area in

00:42has really started to pile in here over the last hour or two. I've been here about all morning,

00:47and there was absolutely nothing here just a couple hours ago. Now, you can't even really

00:51access this roadway. There's a couple of vehicles back here. It's unknown if those have been

00:56abandoned for quite some time or if the residents here just didn't have time to evacuate all of

01:01their belongings. But nonetheless, those are starting to get submerged by water behind me,

01:06and it's only going to continue to creep up here as the inner eyewall and that onshore

01:10flows continues to get closer and closer to this area. Just how fast you can see there how a road

01:17can turn into a raging river. And I know we've been talking about this flooding impact here,

01:24Aaron. Can you dive a little bit deeper into more of those impacts that we're expecting here as we

01:31head throughout this afternoon? Yeah, absolutely. And now this is going to be one of those instances

01:37too, is that as the hurricane moves inland, that doesn't necessarily mean that these areas are

01:42going to be out of the wind. The storm surge is just going to go magically. It's going to take

01:46until it pushes well inland, and that offshore flow can blow a lot of that water out of here.

01:50Even when it's well inland, we're still going to see storm surge rapidly coming in here even after

01:56it's weakening and further inland. And if some of these areas could see anywhere from five to ten

01:59feet, and even after this, there's going to be a tornado threat similar to what we saw with

02:04Hurricane Beryl in Texas early this year into western Louisiana. There's going to be some dry

02:09air working into the eastern quadrant of that hurricane, and that allows those storms associated

02:14with the hurricane to breathe more, able to intensify and take advantage of that wind shear

02:18and produce potentially some significant tornadoes a little bit further east into the

02:22panhandle into Mississippi and Alabama. So these impacts are going to be very widespread,

02:27definitely not limited to just right here in Louisiana. All right, well there you go folks.

02:31That is live information from the ground, what it looks like in areas like Duloc,

02:37Louisiana. Aaron Rigsby, thank you so much for joining us. Please, please stay safe.