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Bertha officially made landfall in the St. Bernard Parish of Louisiana, near the Biloxi Wildlife Management Area, on the afternoon of July 22 as AccuWeather tracked its path live.
Transcript
00:00Officially, again, Bertha has made landfall in St. Bernard Parish near the Biloxi Wildlife Management Area.
00:06Thanks, Ethan, that just coming in moments ago there.
00:09So Bertha has officially made landfall near the area of St. Bernard Parish at a wildlife management area.
00:18So the center of circulation, it's a funny-looking map, doesn't it?
00:22It is a funny-looking map, isn't it? That would be proper grammar.
00:25Deep convection way to the south. Why isn't the bubble plotted there?
00:28Well, I'm going to show you. We have to click ahead.
00:30Because the visible satellite is going to show you the low-level circulation much more clearly.
00:36So that previous map, it showed those bright colors. Those were cold cloud tops.
00:41The previous map was showing you the temperature of the top layer of the clouds that you would see.
00:46Instead of showing temperature, which is really a reflection of how tall clouds are, cold upstairs,
00:51there are some warmer, shallower clouds that were not obvious at all on the infrared satellite.
00:57But our eye would see them if we were to head up to the International Space Station,
01:01or maybe way up there high, way beyond that, and look down at the Earth.
01:05Actually, tens of thousands of feet above the altitude of that.
01:09Tens of thousands of miles, actually.
01:11We're going to go way, way up there, 22,000 miles away.
01:15This is what our eye would see.
01:17And the low clouds, they're going to be bright to our eyes from 22,000 feet up from the geostationary
01:23satellite there.
01:24So that's the low-level circulation there.
01:27And again, we can plot this over a wildlife management area there in St. Bernard Parish.
01:32Officially making landfall.
01:34Peak gusts so far, 41 miles per hour in New Orleans, 40 miles per hour in Eugene Island.
01:38And this storm will continue to drift west with time.
01:42Current wind gusts, 41 miles per hour in New Orleans.
01:45So this is it.
01:45This is the strongest wind so far for New Orleans.
01:47And Bill, remember, he was right up along Lake Pontchartrain.
01:51And we were seeing the overwash, that wind crossing Lake Pontchartrain, blowing water across the road there.
01:58And overall rainfall, it is a more limited storyline here.
02:02Flooding is probably the biggest concern with this.
02:05But the bulk of the deep convection is on the south side of the storm.
02:09And therefore, we're dealing with some fitful little showers here and there.
02:12But they're not that long-lasting in any one spot.
02:15In fact, some of the healthiest showers are way, way east, up into parts of Florida, Georgia, into Mississippi, Alabama
02:23here.
02:23This is Mississippi seeing some of these as well.
02:25And Georgia is even seeing a few off to the east.
02:27But again, the heavier stuff down in southern parts of Alabama and southern Mississippi, as well as southern Louisiana.
02:32So again, a lot of scrappy-looking islands here that are not really buildable.
02:38You can't build on most of them.
02:40There's just too much low-lying area, tidal marshes and so forth.
02:43But there's a wildlife management area where, in St. Bernard Parish, landfall has occurred.
02:48This is what we expect for New Orleans.
02:49We've already seen 40-plus mile-per-hour gusts.
02:52We may see gusts get a little stronger tonight.
02:54We could see gusts to 60 miles per hour in New Orleans.
02:57Storm surge of 1 to 3 feet.
02:59Total rainfall hedging closer to the 2 part of that.
03:02And worse conditions continuing tonight into early tomorrow morning.
03:05Again, I mentioned the ongoing discussion about 30 yards from me there, maybe less than that, among our forecast team.
03:13I would expect to see perhaps a change to this map coming up soon as the storm is interacting with
03:20land.
03:21But there are still some questions about how to handle the uncertainty of will there be a new area of
03:26low pressure at the surface regenerate.
03:30My suspicion is that that's becoming less likely and the center of the storm is probably going to stay over
03:35Louisiana, which would mean a faster weakening trend.
03:39There might still be an inch or two of rain in southwest Louisiana, maybe east Texas.
03:43Here we have 1 to 3-foot storm surge.
03:45Some of the greater impacts here, well, Bill's showing some of them in New Orleans.
03:48Also, concave chunks of coastline here, we're going to be dealing with some issues.
03:52Now, the tide is going out, as Aaron Rigsby said, but tonight we're going to have another high tide that's
03:56going to be a concern.
03:574 to 8 inches of rain, 4 more likely than 8 for some portions of far, far southern southeastern Louisiana,
04:03south of New Orleans.
04:04And our AccuWeather Real Impact Scale rating for this storm is a less than 1, but still, we've got to
04:11keep an eye on it.
04:11It is a tropical storm making landfall.
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