Hurricane Francine makes landfall in Louisiana, leaving significant signs of damage

AccuWeather

AccuWeather's Tony Laubach reported live from the midst of Hurricane Francine as it made landfall in Louisiana on Sept. 11, blowing down signs and sending sparks flying.

Transcript

00:00Let's get the latest from AccuWeather meteorologist and storm chaser Tony Laubach.

00:04Tony is reporting in Houma, Louisiana that is in Terrebonne Parish.

00:11You've been in that right front eyewall and I'll tell you what,

00:14that eye looks to me like it's coming right towards you within the next I'd say hour and a half, Tony.

00:23Yeah and it's been a wild ride here just since we've last talked and you see I'm holding

00:27some of the damage that has occurred here. This was a street sign that actually came

00:31flying off as we were rolling up here and this landed in the parking lot so

00:35call it a sign that landfall has happened here folks. We are in Houma as Bernie mentioned here

00:42and right now it's actually, believe it or not, relatively calm compared to what we had

00:46just about 10-15 minutes ago. I'd say the strongest winds that we've seen

00:50came ripping through here a little while ago. We've been kind of rolling around through town

00:54slowly making the occasional stops and then we do get those stronger gusts that come rolling

00:59through. Most of the damage we've seen again relegated to signs to some of the tree branches.

01:04We haven't seen any major damage. We did get into a trailer park home that did have some

01:09siding ripped off of some of the trailers through running through there but so far we haven't seen

01:12anything of notice here. I'm going to put this down off screen so it doesn't go flying off

01:17somewhere else but I want to show you behind me the gas station. You see the lights that are on

01:20right now and we've got traffic lights on so power for the most part still on which is kind of

01:25surprising. We have seen a few sparks from some of the tree branches that have hit some of the live

01:30wires but really for the most part power in town is on with the exception of a few small blocks

01:36that we've seen a couple of traffic signals that have been out but again we kind of really got into

01:41the heavier bound of the eyewall I'd say about 30 to about 15 minutes ago kind of in that window

01:48and then we are kind of calmed down a little bit if you will still obviously dealing with some

01:53pretty significant gusts but we haven't seen anything significant here probably within the

01:56last five or ten minutes so we might be getting into the eye part of this as Bernie mentioned

02:02here where we expect things to calm down for a little bit but again we saw those wind gusts

02:06easily exceeding 60-70 miles per hour. There goes the sign and we are going to be dealing with

02:12these gusts here again we're still in it even on occasion here we're seeing these gusts and you can

02:17see the rain and the wind really blowing behind me here this I can't really read the road here I

02:22believe this is going to be East 24. I'm not sure what the actual road name is it might be Park

02:28Avenue it might be New Orleans Street I don't know what that sign orientation was before it

02:33came off but this is one of the main drags here we're just outside of downtown just a couple of

02:38blocks to our west and again you're hearing the wind really blowing here and up there goes some

02:43power we just saw some sparks here off the live wire that just came out so we've got the sparks

02:48coming off of that you can see that happening right now this again this is kind of a common

02:53scene that we're seeing for sure you can see the dramatic look at that right now as we're getting

02:57the sparks coming off those power poles so that is something that we're seeing but notice again

03:02though the power's still on despite the sparks here we haven't seen any power flashes coming

03:06out of this area we're in a safe spot we're down we're upwind of that so anything that comes off

03:10that is going to blow away from us but you're seeing those sparks all that happening here in

03:15real time getting some flickers of the power now so we are going to be dealing with that we're

03:19talking about the power outages not off yet but you saw the sparks we're seeing some flickers now

03:24so I would imagine here before too long especially if these winds keep up we're going to see the

03:28power go out here in Houma and again with the sparks and everything else going on so again he

03:33just saw that live here that again blowing downwind of us here we're in a safe spot here

03:39we're kind of actually covered with a gas station and a pretty sturdy building here so not expecting

03:44that to be an issue for us but again Bernie we're talking about a pretty significant storm that's

03:49rolling through here again in the eyewall right now the winds overall have kind of lightened up

03:54considering what we saw about 30 minutes ago but again we're still going to be dealing with those

03:58issues and again we're not done because we got the back side of this that's going to come up

04:01behind it here before too long so folks in Houma continue to hunker down we got the wind we got

04:06the power lines kind of flickering a little bit here so hopefully the power can stay on I'm kind

04:11of in amazed that it has been to this point but we will see what happens as we go through the rest

04:15of the evening. All right Tony Laubach live in Houma, Louisiana I want to take you to the radar

04:20Tony has been in that right front eyewall here but now here's the center of circulation in southwest

04:26Terrebonne Parish the eye of Francine coming right toward right toward Tony right now.

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