BATON ROUGE, Louisiana — Hurricane Francine was barreling toward Louisiana early Wednesday morning and is expected to make landfall within hours, prompting weather experts to fear potentially deadly storm surge, widespread flooding and devastating wind gusts along the northern U.S. Gulf Coast.
Francine, fueled by the extremely warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, strengthened from a tropical storm to a Category 1 hurricane Tuesday night. The National Hurricane Center said Francine could reach Category 2 strength with winds of 96 to 110 mph (155 to 175 km/h) before slamming into a vulnerable coastal region that has yet to fully recover from a series of devastating hurricanes since 2020.
Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry warned Tuesday afternoon — when Francine was still a tropical storm — that residents in southern Louisiana and the heavily populated state capital of Baton Rouge and nearby New Orleans — should “batten down the hatches” and complete final preparations before a 24-hour window closes.
Once Francine makes landfall, Landry said residents should stay put and avoid entering flooded roads, risking blocking emergency workers or utility companies repairing power lines.
The governor said the Louisiana National Guard is deployed to parishes that could be affected by Francine. They are equipped with food, water, nearly 400 high-water vehicles, about 100 boats and 50 helicopters to respond to the storm, including possible search and rescue operations.
The Miami Hurricane Center reported that Francine was centered about 292 miles (475 kilometers) southwest of Morgan City, Louisiana, on Tuesday evening and was moving northeast at 11 mph (17 kilometers per hour).
A hurricane warning was in effect along the Louisiana coast from Cameron eastward to Grand Isle, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of New Orleans, the center said. A storm surge warning extended from the Mississippi-Alabama border to the Alabama-Florida border. Such a warning means there is a chance of life-threatening floods.
In downtown New Orleans, cars and trucks lined up for blocks Tuesday to pick up sandbags from the parking lot of a local YMCA. CEO Erika Mann said Tuesday that volunteers had already distributed 1,000 bags of sand later in the day to people who wanted to protect their homes from possible flooding.
One resident picking up sandbags was Wayne Grant, 33, who moved to New Orleans last year and was nervous about his first potential hurricane in the city. The low-rise rental apartment he shares with his partner had been flooded by a storm the year before, and he wasn’t taking any chances this time.
“It was like a kick in the face, we’ve been trying to stay on top of the weather ever since,” Grant said. “We’re super invested in the place, even though it’s not ours.”
Francine is the sixth named storm of the Atlantic hurricane seasonThere is a risk of life-threatening storm surges and damaging hurricane-force winds, said Brad Reinhart, a senior hurricane specialist at the hurricane center.
Reinhart also says there’s a chance of 4 to 8 inches of rain, with locally a chance of 12 inches in much of Louisiana and Mississippi through Friday morning.
The hurricane center said parts of Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida Panhandle are at risk of “significant” flash flooding and urban flooding beginning Wednesday, followed by a threat of possible flooding later in the week in the lower Mississippi Valley and lower Tennessee Valley as Francine’s waterlogged remnants move inland.
Francine sets her sights on Louisiana’s coastline, which has not fully recovered since Hurricanes Laura and Delta decimated Lake Charles in 2020, followed by Hurricane Ida a year later.
Just over three years later Ida destroyed his home in the Dulac community in Terrebonne Parish on the Louisiana coast — and about a month after he finished rebuilding — Coy Verdin was bracing for another hurricane.
“We had to tear the whole house apart,” he said in a telephone interview, listing a memorized inventory of the work, which included a new roof and new windows.
Verdin, 55, strongly considered moving farther inland, away from the home where he makes his living on nearby Bayou Grand Caillou. After the rebuild, he said he would stay put.
“As long as I can. It’s going to be tough,” he said.
Meteorologists said Francine’s storm surge could reach 10 feet (3 meters) along the Louisiana coast from Cameron to Port Fourchon and Vermilion Bay. They said the storm surge would likely make landfall somewhere between Sabine Pass — on the Texas-Louisiana border — and Morgan City, Louisiana, about 220 miles (350 kilometers) to the east.
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Associated Press writers Curt Anderson in St. Petersburg, Fla., Kevin McGill and Jack Brook in New Orleans contributed to this story.