Richard Fausset in the Los Angeles Times: Thick sheets of rain from Tropical Storm Lee pounded southern Louisiana on Saturday morning as the storm continued to loiter just offshore in the Gulf of Mexico, gathering strength with sustained winds approaching 60 mph.
The storm is expected to cause extensive flooding in southern Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi, with rainfall of 20 inches expected in some areas. The National Weather Service, in a Saturday morning bulletin, said the center of the storm should hit the Louisiana coast in the morning or early afternoon, then move slowly across southern Louisiana on Sunday.
Officials in the region have taken the threat seriously, with states of emergency declared in Louisiana and Mississippi, and voluntary evacuations called for in some low-lying areas. In the New Orleans area, officials posted online a list of streets prone to flooding. They also put swift-water rescue teams on standby, though authorities said they are confident that the levee system will hold, bolstered by a multibillion-dollar upgrade since its catastrophic failure after 2005's Hurricane Katrina.
...A tropical storm warning is in effect for the stretch of the Gulf Coast between the Alabama-Florida border and the Sabine Pass in Texas. A tropical storm watch is in effect from the Alabama-Florida border east to Destin, Fla. Alex Sosnowski, a senior meteorologist at AccuWeather.com, wrote Friday that the storm "has the potential to be the next billion-dollar disaster for the U.S., by way of epic flooding."...
This graphic from NOAA's website shows an approximate representation of coastal areas under a hurricane warning (red), hurricane watch (pink), tropical storm warning (blue) and tropical storm watch (yellow). The orange circle indicates the current position of the center of the tropical cyclone. The black line, when selected, and dots show the National Hurricane Center (NHC) forecast track of the center at the times indicated
No comments:
Post a Comment