Hurricane Harbor: Story of Francine. All the Parts That Made Her and Where Parts of Her Are Going Next? Look at Tropics ...Carolina Coast Possibilities, TD 7 ...

Mimic hints to more to tell ...

This Blog is mostly about Francine.
From ULL to Blob to The Wave.

Now the question remains....

Does a new storm develop from her DNA...
...and her remnant rain in ATL off SE Coast?

Showing the wide view here to show the many parts of Francine. Her solid round ball that accompanies her remnant circulation that went North following the NHC track........the track follows the circulation center. However, often in a system such as Francine, that was really born from two entities that briefly came together to provide another landfilling hurricane on the GOM coastline....at some point it splits apart again and basically a "blob" of rain departed Eastward towards the Atlantic. Two parts that for a while beat as one heart, and now the Eastbound rain is creating dangers in the Florida Panhandle and possibly may seed a new system that could form off the SE coastline.

TD Francine Center <-----> Remant Rain went East.

It's actually fairly common for some named storm's leftovers to mix it up with an area of troubled weather and deliver a new named system. And, be clear every storm in any given year is it's own unique storm, I only offer this example to show that Hurricane Katrina "formed close in" off the Florida coast from a tropical wave and remnants of Tropical Depression 10. Leaving the discussion well written from Wikipedia below

"Hurricane Katrina originated from the merger of a tropical wave and the mid-level remnants of Tropical Depression Ten on August 19, 2005, near the Lesser Antilles. On August 23, the disturbance organized into Tropical Depression Twelve over the southeastern Bahamas. The storm strengthened into Tropical Storm Katrina on the morning of August 24"

So where do we go from here?

This is not some strange dramatic voodoo story of ghosts, goblins and meteorological hype. It simply is what it is and what was is gone and what may be... may be a storm off the East Coast that does unusual things around the Carolina coastline and or over land.

Gulf of Mexico satellite shows this well.

Exit what's left of Francine's circulation North.

Moisture part of Francine swirling off to the East.

Radar showing this evolution that may develop into a new system downt the road. Currently producing squalls coming in from the Gulf of Mexico in Florida where bands are being pulled North into Francine or what's left of her, now downgraded to a Tropical Depression.

Models this morning show this well.

So I don't want to close the book on the story of Francine, other than to say she was born of two systems, a westbound tropical wave that we watched seemingly forever and a blob that originated near an Upper Level Low that spun over the Gulf of Mexico seemingly forever. It took a while, quite a while, for it all to wrap up and become Francine. It was a mess, a real messy evolution and for a short while yesterday it provided incredible visuals of an organized hurricane finally.

NHC started off with low bids on intensity, walked it up to 100 MPH at some point backed down with lower expectations. Data from Recon showed it to have 100 MPH winds and part of me feels they should have left it the way it was originally. For a hot minute... or maybe an hour Francine looked like a formidable hurricane.

Francine doing the 2 Minute Drill.

Cat 2 for a long 2 minutes!

Okay maybe 2 hours!

She did attain 100 MPH winds as per NHC, but it wasn't very long and the shear that they insisted would weaken her near landfall did show up some as well as the ever present dry air. Still, it was explained that the cooler, drier area that found it's way into her system would weaken her overall intensity and yet exaggerate the winds with localized high gusts, strong and long that would tear across the region despite the lowered intensity.

There are wind reports that do not show very strong hurricanes winds after landfall, and they will be studied and more wind reports added and at some point Francine will be re-evaluated and I'm curious to see what NHC does with it or let's say has to say about it in their Post Season analysis.

Understand the lay of the land where it made landfall, and understand very little is above ground and much is marsh, swamp, low country and little delta like areas where rivers run out to the sea. It's where "Last Island Hurricane" came ashore (more or less) and after a pair of strong hurricanes there smashed the little boom towns out on the barrier islands, people died, people packed up and moved further inland. And, that's why you see very few large developed Coastal cities in this part of Louisiana compared to Florida that has both Tampa Bay and Miami hovering a sea level with tall buildings clinging to the coastline with break taking views.

It's a different coastline from Mississippi.

It's Marsh and most small towns are fishing villages.

Nature Refuges and Academic research facilities.

Homes are sparse and elevated.

Looks like land on a map.

It's Bays and Bayous.

Barrier Islands.

Cocodrie where flooding was wild...

is in the bottom left of this image above.

Good video on X @BradArnoldWX

Zooming in to that part of Louisiana

South of Cocodrie that flooded....

...is the Isle Dernieres now a Nature Refuge.

That was Last Island....

...that did not last the big hurricanes.

Link below..

Note how small Cocdrie is actually.

Let's look at Cocodrie.

Small sliver of streets.

South of Chauvin.

It's a long, long road to Cocodrie.

You see a lot of wild sunrise and sunsets I'm sure.

Mississippi coastline has towns and cities.

Small towns, bigger cities.

Gulfport, Biloxi

This region in Louisiana not so much.

Nature taught humans where to build.

Before NHC put up Cones and warnings.

A 150 MPH hurricane was a surprise.

Even a 100 MPH hurricane is a surprise...

...without watches and warnings.

I often disagree with things NHC does or says in their Discussion or advisories. For example, they had data that supported possibly 100 MPH close to landfall, then models changed and didn't support it and they pulled it back and then models showed something else as they often do. Then it intensified steadily in some 2 Minute Drill that the Dolphins love so much and suddenly recon info said it was 100 MPH. Surprise. Should they have left it at 100 to begin with and lastly was there really 100 MPH winds in Francine and if so for how long? Where they long gusts and transitory, an illusion or really there in small bands and areas around the developing eye? Research is always done post season, they don't just sit around playing on the incredible computers with large monitors shooting the breeze, they work all year and post season it's often analysis. This all said........Thank God we have the NHC and they do a great job giving us watches and warnings and heads up before a hurricane is on the way.

Damage seen across the area was not really consistent with 100 MPH winds, not to say they weren't, especially as that part of Louisiana has small structures, not always well built to codes that homes in Miami are built to and usually you'd see more damage than trees that go snap in steady winds of over 50 MPH easily. Gas Stations looked fairly good (a fast measure of intensity in a localized area) and trailers not so much. We will see.

Video looked awesome. iCyclone always delivers both incredible video and content. Reed Timmer was there having fun. Mike was riding on a long backroad talking to everyone online while trying to get 18 miles to a "real street" and well there aren't many real streets down that way, just backroads and often with rising water on all sides.

Lastly, let's talk about the water and the flooding. Please remember it rained off and on incessantly for a good 2 to 3 weeks from Upper Level Low's dirty side went inland and then went back out over water and evolved into "The Blob" before "The Wave" moved into the Southern Gulf of Mexico and began the mating dance that went on for days as the blob crept closer to the the wave and the wave waved to the blob but while the blob flirted it held back a bit forcing the wave to come after it and just as they looked like they were forming with a deep wild center that Alice could fall down fast, it fell apart again and both pulled back to their corners of the Gulf of Mexico and in one of the longest run on sentences and meteorological mating rituals I have ever seen in the tropics, "The Center" came back. This murky, messy creature rained on Mexico, refusing to leave the Tex/Mex coast and it wasn't until the original remant blob moved inland far ahead of Francine did Francine move out fully into the water and took deep breaths and found that it liked being Francine and wound up into what acutally looked like a Hurricane. Honored to get the Alice graphic from @Stormchasernick and yes the beautiful deep center came back. Like the cat. And, Francine moved rapidly towards landfall in an area that's population swelled with all the chasers who were there to chase her and Fancine delivered.

That really is the bottomline in that Francine delivered in the end. How strong it was and how strong for how long, really doesn't matter. The wind howled, trees snapped, chasers snapped pictures and took incredible videos and sometimes just had fun out there which you can do in a Cat 1 Hurricane vs a Cat 5 Hurricane when all you can do is hunker down at some point.

Francine is a good example of what a solid Category 1 Hurricane can do. Not all hurricanes have to be Major Hurricanes to make records, get attention and do destruction. I haven't heard of any deaths, hope there were none, but it's too soon to say we won this one!

It's not totally over.

The center went North, the weather/moisture/rain went East and is expected to arrive fully in the Atlantic where another blobby area close in (now with it's own yellow circle) is waiting for it and we will see if we get a non-tropical low or more a tropical low with a name. I'm waiting in NC to see more tropical weather similar to Debby from this though you are never sure what you are really going to get when you open a box of chocolates that don't have a code to tell you what you are biting into.

As for the Atlantic......................the MDR..................TD7 and it's friends and the new wave over Africa.