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.
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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.