Hurricane Francine slams into Louisiana with dangerous winds

Hurricane Francine is approaching Louisiana with strong winds and dangerous storm surges, increasing in speed as it nears the coast.

Francine is a Category 1 hurricane with sustained winds of 145 kilometers per hour, the US National Hurricane Center said in a warning at 10 a.m. local time. The storm is no longer forecast to reach Category 2 strength on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale. It is headed for a marshy stretch of coast about 70 miles west of New Orleans, where it is expected to make landfall later Wednesday.

“It’s going to make landfall in no man’s land in Louisiana,” AccuWeather Inc. meteorologist Adam Douty said.

Wind gusts in New Orleans could reach 60 mph. The storm grounded 233 flights in Houston, New Orleans and Baton Rouge, according to FlightAware, an airline tracking tool.

Oil and gas companies have evacuated some offshore platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. While the storm is not forecast to directly affect any of the region’s major natural gas export facilities, gas supplies at Sempra’s Cameron Terminal were down ahead of Francine.

Francine is set to pound the region with heavy rains, creating the risk of flash and urban flooding, the hurricane center said. Storm surges in some areas could reach 10 feet (3 meters).

After making landfall, the storm is expected to move into Mississippi on Thursday and head north toward Memphis. While there could be some flooding, the rains will bring some relief to the Mississippi River, where low water levels threaten to destroy shipments of everything from corn to gasoline. But the rains will make field work difficult, delaying harvests and reducing grain quality.

Francine will likely cause $2 billion to $3 billion in damage and losses, said Chuck Watson, a disaster modeler at Enki Research. Francine will be the third hurricane to hit the continental US this year.

The hurricane center is watching three other disturbances in the central Atlantic Ocean that may become tropical storms. One of the systems has been upgraded to a tropical depression and will likely be named Tropical Storm Gordon overnight. It is currently more than 300 miles west of the Cape Verde Islands off the coast of Africa.

Copyright 2024 Bloomberg.

TOPICS
Catastrophe Natural disasters Hurricane Louisiana