Francine made landfall in Louisiana as a powerful Category 2 hurricane

Hurricane Francine gathered strength just as it hit the Louisiana coast, reaching Category 2 strength with winds of 100 miles per hour and a dangerous storm surge.

The storm made landfall in Terrebonne Parish around 6 p.m. ET on Wednesday, according to the US National Hurricane Center. Francine hit a marshy and sparsely populated stretch of coast about 85 miles west of New Orleans, which along with Baton Rouge is on flash flood watch.

“Heavy rain and hurricane-force winds are moving over land in southern Louisiana,” National Hurricane Center forecasters said, warning residents to stay inside and away from windows in case of debris.

Within an hour of making landfall in Louisiana, Francine was downgraded to a Category 1 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 90 mph (145 kilometers per hour). The storm is expected to continue to weaken as it makes landfall and could be downgraded to a tropical storm as soon as Friday morning, the hurricane center said.

The storm marks the end of an unusual lull in the Atlantic hurricane season, which was quiet in late August, just as the season normally approaches its peak. After several weeks of low activity, forecasters are now tracking five storms or potential storms in the mid-Atlantic basin, including Francine.

Nearly 139,000 customers in Louisiana are already without power, according to Poweroutage.us. And 253 flights from Houston, New Orleans and Baton Rouge were grounded, according to FlightAware, an airline tracking tool.

Hurricanes often lose steam as they approach land, cut by “wind shear,” or local winds moving in the opposite direction of the storm. But Francine managed to gain strength before hitting Louisiana, said Alex DaSilva, senior hurricane expert for AccuWeather.

“A lot of that has to do with the extremely warm temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico,” DaSilva said. “Ocean heat content is essentially the depth of warm water—how deep it extends below the ocean’s surface. It’s at record levels for this time of year.”

The storm will not directly affect any of the major natural gas export plants in the region. Oil and gas companies previously evacuated some offshore platforms in the Gulf of Mexico and shut down nearly 39 percent of oil production and 49 percent of gas production as a precaution.

Francine will likely cause $2 billion to $3 billion in damage and losses, said Chuck Watson, a disaster modeler at Enki Research.

This is now the third hurricane to hit the continental U.S. in 2024, making it the ninth year since 1900 to have occurred by Sept. 11, Phil Klotzbach, a hurricane researcher at Colorado State University, confirmed in an e- email to Bloomberg News. That’s partly because the storms that formed this year developed in the central and western parts of the Atlantic basin.

Francine is expected to drench the southeastern US with heavy rains that could cause flooding as far east as Tallahassee and the Florida Panhandle and as far north as Cape Girardeau, Missouri.

Photo: HOUMA, LOUISIANA – SEPTEMBER 11: A person walks through a downpour as Hurricane Francine hits the area on September 11, 2024 in Houma, Louisiana. Hurricane Francine maintains its Category 1 classification and is expected to make landfall on the Louisiana coast later this afternoon. Weather forecasters are predicting 90 mph winds near the eye and a strong storm surge along the coast. (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

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Catastrophe Natural disasters Hurricane Louisiana