00:00Alex, Bertha is just, it's doing a lot of things, and it's not what our typical tropical storm does.
00:06No, it's just meandering around basically up in the northwestern gulf right now,
00:10and sometimes these systems that are very disorganized almost have a mind of their own,
00:15and so what has essentially happened is the low-level center has essentially moved northwest here
00:20over the last couple of hours towards the Louisiana coast, so it's there where you're circling right there,
00:24and you can see all the bad weather, all of those showers and thunderstorms,
00:27those higher winds are to the southwest of the center of circulation right now.
00:31There even could be a little bit of a mid-level center to the southwest there,
00:35but we track where that center of circulation is or that low-level center,
00:39and the Hurricane Hunters were flying around in there the last couple hours,
00:42and that's where they place it.
00:44They place it right near the coastline there in southwestern Louisiana,
00:48and so as a result, we bumped our track a little bit further to the north.
00:52Again, not going to be really expecting any change in impacts,
00:55but just the center of circulation is a little bit more to the north.
00:58All that bad weather is still to the southwest, and we expect that to go into Texas later today.
01:03And we'll take a closer look at that latest eye path here in a minute,
01:07but I just want to show also, I mean, Bertha being back in the Gulf,
01:13it had that opportunity that maybe could strengthen a little bit,
01:16but that's not really what's happened.
01:18No, that wind shear really played a big role here in preventing this from really exploding,
01:23which is certainly good news.
01:24I think that wind shear really saved us in a lot of the Gulf Coast states here,
01:27so it's not going to strengthen any more, we don't think, right now,
01:30because the center is just too close to land.
01:32It's going to be moving onshore in a few hours here,
01:34so we're just going to be tracking that heavy rain across portions of Texas here.
01:39That's going to be the main story as we move forward.
01:41And again, you can see all of that wind shear there in the dark purple.
01:44That is really what prevented this from really intensifying here.
01:47This has been kind of the saving grace for Bertha here,
01:51preventing this storm from really becoming a hurricane over the last couple of days.
01:56So that's good news here.
01:57And again, but that wind shear is what's going to be pushing all of that rain down into Texas later
02:01this afternoon.
02:02All right, so let's talk about what to expect now.
02:06One thing that we've already seen goes beyond just where the storm's heading.
02:10Yeah, exactly.
02:11And we're watching the wave heights here on this map here.
02:15You can see most of the biggest waves are south of Louisiana right now.
02:18But don't be fooled.
02:19If you're on the west coast of Florida, maybe at the beaches, places like that,
02:23it could be sunny outside.
02:24But there is a rip current danger all across the Gulf Coast.
02:27So do keep that in mind if you're going to be venturing out to the beaches.
02:30And that rip current risk, we were talking about this earlier,
02:33that extends even through tomorrow.
02:35So even more emphasis on what you said about skies may be sunny,
02:38but doesn't mean it's safe to go in the water.
02:40Yeah, exactly.
02:41And again, we're also going to be watching for some tidal rise here,
02:44some of that storm surge, one to three feet.
02:46We've already observed some of that in portions of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana.
02:50So we do expect that to continue into the northern Texas coast there.
02:54So just keep in mind some of those low-lying spots at the beaches,
02:57some of those areas could see some minor coastal flooding.
03:01And Alex, one thing we saw yesterday around New Orleans was places like Lake Pontchartrain.
03:06We ended up getting some storm surge flooding there just because of how that coast is
03:10and how the waterways work.
03:12Let's talk a little bit more about Galveston Bay, about Houston, how that could play out.
03:16Yeah, exactly.
03:17So we could actually get kind of a northwest wind or northeast wind,
03:20and that could actually get a little bit of flooding on some of the back bays
03:23in some of those areas so as the winds flip around.
03:25So again, we're not talking about major inundation or anything like that,
03:28but some areas in the back bays of Galveston Bay could see a little bit of tidal rise there.
03:34So any of those really, really low spots that are typical flooding spots could see a little bit.
03:39Now, up until this point, rain hasn't really been a big deal with this storm,
03:44but now all of that convection is going to be moving on to land.
03:47Exactly.
03:47And that's why we're expecting to see that rain go into south Texas here.
03:51You can see that stripe of 2 to 4 inches there near the Corpus Christi area.
03:54So these are the areas that we're concerned about, some heavy downpours.
03:57We're not expecting widespread flooding or anything like that,
04:00but there could be very localized flash flooding where any of these really heavy thunderstorms set up,
04:06but this does not look like a widespread event.
04:08Some of those thunderstorms can bring some stronger wind gusts too,
04:11so let's touch on that quick here.
04:13Yeah, again, any of those thunderstorms can bring those higher gusts.
04:17We're not expecting widespread 40 to 60 mile per hour winds.
04:20Any of the stronger gusts would likely be confined right to the coastline
04:24or in any of those heavier downpours.
04:27All right, now back to the I-Path.
04:29Alex, take us through the change that's been made here.
04:32Again, just a little bit of a shift to the north.
04:34Still expecting landfall to be midday or early this afternoon central time there
04:38in and around the Galveston Bay area, probably just north of Galveston Bay.
04:43Again, the little shift north will not really change much of the impacts.
04:48Rain still is going to be the primary impact from this storm in south Texas.
04:52All right, we have about 10 seconds,
04:54but we want to look forward to the rest of hurricane season, Alex.
04:57Doesn't look like anything for the rest of the month of July,
05:00so good news there.
Comments