Tropical Storm Francine was more intense than expected Tuesday morning, but meteorologists are still confident the storm will become a hurricane later Tuesday and hit Louisiana as a Category 2 hurricane on Wednesday.
According to the latest weather forecast, Francine will reach Category 2 status with sustained winds of 100 mph just before it makes landfall. The hurricane center says that wind shear just before it hits Louisiana could help prevent the hurricane from strengthening.
The entire Louisiana coast remains under a hurricane or tropical storm warning, and the entire Texas coast is under a tropical storm or hurricane warning, according to meteorologists at the National Hurricane Center. Francine’s winds could bring up to 10 feet of storm surge to the hardest-hit areas of Louisiana, prompting mandatory and voluntary evacuations.
While Francine’s future looks more uncertain, the same cannot be said of the two unrests occurring in the Atlantic Ocean.
The chance of the nearest hurricane forming in the next two to seven days dropped to 40% overnight, while National Hurricane Center meteorologists raised the chance of the hurricane forming in the next week to 70%.
However, long-range computer models are still a mess with both systems. It’s too early to know whether either could pose a threat to land, and it will be easier to predict when — or if — either develops into a tropical depression.
Hurricane Hunters will resume their investigation of Tropical Storm Francine on Tuesday, which should help meteorologists gauge how powerful the storm will be over the warmer-than-average waters of the eastern Gulf of Mexico.
