Powerful winds pounded Houma, Louisiana, as Hurricane France worked its way inland on the evening of Sept. 11.
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00:00Let's get the latest from AccuWeather meteorologist and storm chaser, Tony Laubach, who's live in Houma, Louisiana.
00:09Yeah, we are still dealing with some strong winds. In fact, if you'd come to us about 10 minutes ago, we'd have been in the winds, but we wouldn't have been in the rain.
00:16It was dry, but it was very, very nasty in terms of the winds, and we've still been dealing with that.
00:21The rain coming back down here, so we're right on the edge of where the eyewall and the eye meet.
00:27We haven't quite gotten into the calm conditions of the eye, and the rain just keeps barreling.
00:31We knew as we got a little bit further east, we probably were going to spend a little bit more time in the eyewall as opposed to the eye,
00:37but we are still dealing with that. As you mentioned, power is out.
00:41The power has been sporadically going out in sections as we've been kind of moving along.
00:45We're just at the Highway 90 junction here. You head south, you get into downtown Houma where we were earlier,
00:52and that is where we are currently located right now.
00:54In this general vicinity, we have no power, but we continue to see the strong wind.
00:59You can see that behind me, those trees, those signs just whipping around here as we're still seeing dust easily in the 60 mile per hour range.
01:06We are parked at a bank right now, a pretty solid brick building, so that's blocking me from a lot of this wind,
01:12and we're still dealing with the rains right now.
01:14We've been in and out of town. We're going to try to get some video out here before too long,
01:18but we have seen some sporadic, I would say, lower end damage.
01:22We've seen some of the metal roofs in the areas that have been peeled off.
01:25One of the roofs thrown into some power poles, that knocked down several poles on the main drag south into Houma,
01:31so that is blocking some of the southbound traffic.
01:34Right now, a lot of folks turning around. Again, we'll get you some fresh video from there,
01:37and we've seen a lot of the power lines that have been mainly affected by the flying debris,
01:42the tree branches, parts of the roofs. That has been more of the issue,
01:45and again, that has kind of led to some of the power poles that have come down that we have seen.
01:49We've seen no significant structural damage outside, again, of metal roofing.
01:54We did see an industrial building that lost, I would say, about 70% of its metal roof.
01:58That was gone, and again, we'll have video of that coming up here,
02:01but again, we're starting to really see, you can hear those winds here.
02:04In fact, we've got a good gust coming up behind me now.
02:06I just saw several of the branches, and you can hear, well, you can't hear, but I can hear.
02:10It's an amazing thing, but we've had several tree branches that came off these trees that are just off the background.
02:16Those just did across the road here, so we are getting a pretty good gust.
02:19Again, I am behind a building, so I am kind of sheltered from a majority of the wind that's coming through here right now.
02:25Again, behind me, you see the trees, the signs. Those are all blowing around,
02:29but we are still dealing with some significant winds here.
02:32I would easily say well over hurricane strength.
02:35We're probably down into the 70 range on some of the stronger gusts, maybe 80 miles per hour.
02:39Very difficult to tell, because again, you see those consistent, sustained winds that are blowing 50, 60, 70,
02:46and then you get the gust on top of that, much different from some of the severe thunderstorms that you see in the plains
02:51where you get the gusts that kind of come up all at once.
02:53So this is more of just a strong wind in general, and then you get the potent gusts that come in,
02:58and it's very, very weird, too.
03:00If you haven't experienced a hurricane, when you get into some of the calmer moments,
03:03you can hear those gusts come through the trees, the buildings, from a distance,
03:08and you get a few-second notice before you get the big wind gusts coming in.
03:11But again, you can see all that rain just blowing here.
03:14Again, this is roughly east to west, or the rain blowing east to west right now.
03:19Again, coming down heavy about 15 minutes ago, as we said, we had no rain.
03:24We were just in the wind, and that rain is coming back here.
03:27I haven't seen much in the way of flooding outside of the storm surge areas.
03:30There has been some minor ponding in some of the roads, but nothing impassable at this point.
03:35I will make a mention, though, my traffic app is telling me that Highway 90, just to the east of here,
03:40the next exit over, is closed, heading toward New Orleans.
03:44I don't know exactly from what. We're going to try to figure that out here
03:47once we get the winds to come down a little bit here.
03:49Obviously, we don't want to be on the open highways.
03:51If those trees are coming down, if that's one of the issues,
03:53we certainly don't want to be in a dangerous situation.
03:55So we're going to toss it back to you in the studio.
03:57Again, here in Houma, power is out for a majority of the city.
04:00We are expecting that to be the case probably for the rest of the evening
04:03as these winds continue to blow, as the eyewall continues to work its way through this area.
04:07All right, Tony. It'll be interesting to see how the eye behaves there
04:11because we checked in just about 20, 30 minutes ago with Aaron Rigsby.
04:15He's about 13 miles south of you down in Duloc, and his experience in the eye,
04:19he's a little more firmly in the eye at the moment, has been that the wind is strong there
04:22and he's not getting that quiet spell that you sometimes do get in the heart of an eye.
04:27So we'll be interested to check back in with you, and just for perspective here on the radar,
04:31I can show where Tony is to the north, and again,
04:34he's going to pull the measuring stick south from Houma down to Duloc.
04:38Again, those are the two points we just recently heard from.
04:41We got Tony to the north, and again, just down to the south of the Duloc, there is Aaron Rigsby.