00:00We do continue our coverage of Bertha along the Gulf Coast right now, and we want to check in
00:04with meteorologist and storm chaser Tony Laubach. This is a setup here where Port Lavaca, Texas,
00:10is seeing some rain. Tony, I see you're out in the water there, so what's going on out there?
00:17I'm testing the waters, Jeff. Literally testing the waters here. Yeah, we are in Port Lavaca.
00:23We were kind of following that little squall, little blob of heavy rain, which has kind of pushed off
00:30and dispersed a little bit here since we worked our way up here. So we decided that we would take
00:35Steven Seagal's advice from the last live hit and kind of wait out the next round here and see some
00:40of the dark skies behind me. That is indicative of the next showery activity that's working through.
00:46What we're really starting to see, though, is an overall dissipation of some of the heavier rains.
00:51This was kind of a solid shield of rain when we got down here this morning. In fact,
00:56we even had potential water spouts well offshore as that line was rolling in, and then things have
01:00since kind of weakened, and we've started to see a lot of that disperse and really start to kind of
01:06fall apart as it's worked its way onshore. We haven't seen a lot of this really well inland,
01:10at least in this neck of the woods, I'd say, between here down to Corpus Christi and then maybe up
01:16toward the Galveston area. But it has been mainly spotty at best, and the heavy stuff that has
01:21come down, and we'll show you some of that here. Came down pretty good there. Tropical downpours
01:26certainly not out of the question under any of these heavier little splats of rain, but most of
01:31them not hanging around long enough to be impactful in any meaningful way other than a few puddles on
01:36the road. Most of that had cleared out before, really hadn't a chance to accumulate much of
01:40anywhere. Did see some gusty winds at occasion, and I say gusty with a very grain of salt, about 20
01:48to
01:4825 miles per hour on some of the winds that we saw at that. Even right now, we're seeing a
01:52steady
01:53wind in that 15 mile per hour range. It's not even enough to really drive the waves here at
01:57Lighthouse Beach here in Port Lavaca. So we are really not dealing with a whole lot in the way of
02:02impacts from this. We obviously are well south. You've heard us talking about that all day, how
02:08we are well south of where the track center, if you will, and I say that again with a grain
02:13of salt,
02:14where Martha is much further to the north because down south, this has been really very displaced
02:20from the center of circulation in terms of where the heavier precipitation has worked its way in.
02:24Now, as it moves further inland, it's going to start to interact with terrain. I think that's
02:28where you're going to start to see some of the heavier rains. That likely across the international
02:31border down in Mexico, maybe far south Texas near the Rio Grande, but it's going to be kind of an
02:36off and on thing for us here. Now, we will see off and on development. So just because we're looking
02:41at
02:41the radar, looking at the clearing kind of off to our east, I got to get my orientation right. I'm
02:46used to saying clearing off to the west, but we see the clearing off to the east. We could still
02:49see
02:50development continue on and off through the day. So by no means do I think we're done necessarily.
02:54But again, this is not me also saying that this is going to be an end of the world thing.
02:58This is a
02:58very low end tropical system for most people. The people here on the beach are folks out in the
03:03water right now. Most of them probably aren't even aware that we are in the midst of a tropical system.
03:07Now, all the tropical storm warnings, those were further north. They never got down this far,
03:12despite some of the heavier precipitation that we saw down here. So we were kind of, again,
03:16really on the south end of really kind of the broad storm. Again, if you were to draw kind of
03:21a line
03:22around where Bertha necessarily would be, we would be very much on the south end of that. But again,
03:28not a typical setup for this. And as I talked about last hour, just a lot of things working
03:32against it. And even with the Gulf waters being as warm as they are, still not enough
03:37to really generate an organized storm. So despite getting named, despite having some issues in the
03:43coastal flooding you've been talking about up a little bit further up the coast here in central
03:47Texas Gulf Coast area, not a whole lot to deal with. And we're hoping that remains the case.
03:52All right, Tony, thank you for that. AccuWeather meteorologist, storm chaser Tony Lawback,
03:56testing the waters, as he said, at Port Labaka, Texas. Let's go a little up the coast into Galveston,
04:03Texas. And here is the view there. You can see it's also a kind of a dark sky. Showers have
04:08been
04:08at times nearby. But all the deep convection is farther south, a little closer to where Tony has
04:14been. This is very lopsided. The center of circulation is actually moving west, but the deep
04:20convection is way displaced to the southwest. Let's bring up the visible satellite. That completes the
04:24picture. That's why we are confident in the low level circulation center. Here it is, moving to
04:30an area a little bit north of Houston. Meanwhile, all the deep convection has been displaced because
04:35of the wind shear. Winds aloft is kind of shoving the deep convection, the taller updrafts farther
04:40southwest. So there is some locally heavy rain near Katy, Texas, Houston and points west. Look out,
04:46that area is going to see some locally heavy rain. Corpus Christi, some downpours and other areas near
04:51New Orleans. Just a few spotty leftovers there. Winds sustained right now. We are a far cry from a
04:56tropical storm when it comes to any land measurement. You would need sustained to 39, sustained 17 right
05:01now. There are gusts of 30 miles per hour at times. But again, that's on the high end.
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