Francine slams Louisiana as a Category 2 hurricane

HOUMA, La. - Hurricane Francine strengthened into a Category 2 storm as it lashed the Gulf Coast on Wednesday evening, threatening to unleash fierce winds, devastating surge, torrential rain and possibly tornadoes upon swaths of Louisiana, Mississippi and other states.

Francine made landfall just after 5 p.m. local time in Terrebonne Parish, La., about 30 miles south-southwest of Morgan City, the National Hurricane Center said. The storm’s maximum sustained winds hovered around 100 mph as it slammed into the coastline, but nearby communities had already been feeling its wrath. The agency said hurricane-force winds extended up to 40 miles from the storm’s center, and tropical-storm-force winds had stretched outward up to 140 miles.

“If it picks up more strength, that’s a concern,” Terrebonne Parish Sheriff Timothy Soignet said as he monitored Francine’s progress on radar Wednesday.

Some of the worst conditions were expected to affect population centers from Morgan City and Bayou Vista to Houma. The forecast in this area, about 15 to 20 miles inland, called for peak sustained winds of 60 to 80 mph and gusts to 95 mph on Wednesday evening. Low-lying areas near and to the east of where Francine comes ashore could see a storm surge of 5 to 10 feet.

Tropical-storm-force winds, exceeding 40 mph, were expected in and around Baton Rouge and New Orleans later in the evening, bringing the potential for downed trees and utility lines and widespread power outages.

Adding to the angst: Francine made landfall along an area of the Gulf Coast that has seen a burst of sea level rise since 2010, according to a Washington Post analysis. At nearby Grand Isle on the Louisiana coast, and New Canal Station on Lake Pontchartrain, average sea levels have increased by about 6 inches in the past 14 years.

Ahead of the storm’s arrival, residents in New Orleans were told to stay off roads and shelter in place. In Terrebonne Parish, about an hour southwest of the city and more directly in Francine’s projected path, officials implemented a parish-wide curfew beginning at 8 a.m.

A mandatory evacuation order was also called for residents living in the parish’s most low-lying coastal areas, including the Isle de Jean Charles, a tribal community that sits outside upgraded levee protection and that has undergone federally funded resettlement in recent years because of rising sea levels and coastal erosion.

Roads remained mostly empty Wednesday in Houma, aside from a few residents completing their final preparations. At the local Lowe’s store, Chris Bundy, 72, said she was not particularly concerned about this storm.

“I’ve been through a lot of hurricanes in my life,” she said.

Still, after having to live without power for three scorching weeks in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida in 2021, Bundy decided to upgrade her preparations for Francine. Just before the store’s early closure Wednesday morning, Bundy loaded a generator into her cart.

Soignet’s biggest worry for the rural, coastal Cajun parish, home to about 110,000 residents: storm surge. The northeastern side of a hurricane typically produces the worst surge, and that’s where it looked like Terrebonne might end up.

“That’s always a concern. But honestly, our levees have been holding up pretty good,” Soignet said. Still, he acknowledged, “we’re going to get a pretty good brunt of this.”

Soignet had spoken with sheriffs in nearby Assumption and Plaquemines parishes, as well as other coastal parishes, and said his office was prepared with high-water and former military vehicles to provide mutual aid if needed.

The preparations and warnings from officials up and down the coast, and even well inland, hinted at the widespread impact the storm could have as it plows northward, even as it is expected to rapidly weaken after landfall.

Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry (R) urged “everyone in the state to be cautious and vigilant” at a morning news conference. “We don’t want to downplay this event, but we also do not want people to panic,” he said.

New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell, who signed an emergency proclamation Wednesday morning, called on local agencies to prepare emergency services and assistance. The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency deployed more than 100,000 sandbags to southern parts of the state.

Local states of emergency were declared along the Mississippi coast, including in Harrison and Jackson counties and the cities of Ocean Springs, Pascagoula and Gautier. Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves (R) also declared a state of emergency Tuesday afternoon, and schools across coastal Mississippi canceled classes Wednesday and Thursday.

The largest utility provider in Louisiana, Entergy, said customers in the direct path could be without power for a week or more, depending on Francine’s strength. The company has mobilized 5,300 restoration workers to restore power.

Entergy Mississippi, one of the largest providers in Mississippi, said that because of drought conditions, more trees could fall and down power lines.

Francine’s arrival signaled the reawakening of a hurricane season that forecasters had predicted to be feverish, but one that had fallen strangely quiet. Recent weeks saw the longest late-summer stretch in more than 50 years without a tropical system in the Atlantic Ocean or Gulf of Mexico.

The last time that the Atlantic had no named storm formations from Aug. 13 to Sept. 8 was 1968, Colorado State University hurricane expert Philip Klotzbach wrote on X.

In addition to Francine, the National Hurricane Center is tracking four disturbances with varying potential to develop into at least a tropical depression - the first step to becoming a tropical storm, which requires sustained surface winds of at least 39 mph. A tropical storm becomes a hurricane if its winds increase to at least 74 mph.

Jutting out into the Gulf of Mexico, Louisiana has historically been a frequent destination for hurricanes, and that’s been particularly true in recent years. Francine is poised to become the seventh hurricane to strike the Pelican State since 2017.

A hurricane makes landfall in or near Louisiana about once every other year on average, while a named storm goes ashore about once per year, according to data compiled by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The storms tend to come in bunches during the most active seasons. In 2020 alone, six named storms, including three hurricanes, battered the state. Between 2000 and 2023, Louisiana was hit by 13 hurricanes, including catastrophic Katrina in 2005 and Ida in 2021.

Francine’s wind and rain were poised to again wreak havoc on some of those same communities in the coming hours and days.

As the storm barrels ashore in southern Louisiana, it will draw enormous amounts of moisture inland from the Gulf of Mexico, fueling torrential rainfall and areas of flooding. Four to eight inches of rain, with a few double-digit totals, were probable in central, southern and southeastern Louisiana, as well as southern Mississippi, through Thursday morning.

“This rainfall could lead to considerable flash, urban and river flooding,” the National Hurricane Center wrote.

On Thursday, the heaviest rain is likely to spread north through central and northern Mississippi. As Francine inches farther north, it is expected to slow to a crawl, stalling near or north of Memphis for much of Thursday evening through Friday night, or even early Saturday. That could increase the risk of heavy rains in the Mississippi Valley, as far north as southeastern Missouri and southern Illinois.

Meanwhile, the National Hurricane Center said the storm could spawn tornadoes Wednesday night across parts of southeast Louisiana, southern Mississippi, southern Alabama, and the Florida Panhandle. On Thursday, the tornado risk is expected to move into parts of Alabama, southwest Georgia and the Florida Panhandle, the agency said.

Francine was on track to pass through St. Martin Parish, where Sheriff Becket Breaux had fanned deputies out in advance of the storm.

“It’s almost like the calm before the storm,” Breaux said Wednesday afternoon, as winds gusted up to 30 mph. “We expect it to pick up substantially.”

While the parish is home to about 52,000, Breaux was most concerned about flooding in the southern portion, where about 1,500 people live.

“I’ve got my deputies all staged out here,” Breaux said. “It’s not a big community, but every life matters.”

He said deputies were prepared to evacuate residents from the area, where the storm’s impact could linger.

“It’s an isolated community, and when the electricity goes out, it takes longer than normal to get it back on,” he said.

At Houma’s Downtown Marina, Warren Renfroe, 76, planned to ride out the storm on his houseboat. A retired ship’s captain, Renfroe said he spent years navigating the open seas in conditions worse than what he expected Francine to bring.

Renfroe felt his boat would be safest moored at the marina, which he said sits slightly inland from Terrebonne Parish’s more coastal areas. He was hoping the spot would be shielded from storm surge by the ongoing Morganza to the Gulf of Mexico project, a multibillion-dollar storm protection system that includes 80 miles of levees in this parish alone. The system’s floodgates were closed this week in advance of the incoming hurricane.

To prepare for Francine’s arrival, he secured his boat and loaded it with enough gasoline and diesel fuel to last 12 days, plus water for him and his wife to shower daily.

Sitting at his boat’s kitchen island, with his small dog napping in the living room, Renfroe said that despite all his planning, it’s still important to maintain a healthy respect for Mother Nature.

“She’s bad to the bone,” he said.

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Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Jason Samenow, Matthew Cappucci, Dan Stillman and Kevin Crowe contributed to this report.