Powerful winds hammer the New Orleans area as Francine spins north

AccuWeather

Intense winds swept across the New Orleans area after nightfall on Sept. 11 as Hurricane Francine barreled northward through Louisiana.

Transcript

00:00But our coverage begins right now with Ali Reed.

00:03She is live in Kenner, Louisiana, and it has been a nasty evening here.

00:08My goodness, Ali, what are you dealing with out there?

00:10This is the eye wall. It is a body right now.

00:16Jeff, it is extremely hard to hear you, but I can tell you we are experiencing

00:20wind gusts at times 80 to 90 miles per hour here in Kenner, Louisiana.

00:27Landfall we know happened just over three hours ago.

00:30But now the thick of it has made its way to New Orleans

00:33and the surrounding areas to right here.

00:36It is intense at times.

00:38The wind and the rain are extremely thick.

00:41We've got Lake Pontchartrain directly behind me here.

00:45Those storm surges just coming up and over the water.

00:48The rocks here really is such an impressive and incredible sight to see.

00:53I will say these gusts are hard to stay up on my feet.

00:57That is telling you how intense this storm is right now.

01:02Now, as we've been roving about the area here, we have seen a number

01:06a number of transformers blow at least 10 to 15 in this area.

01:10And it's expected that as we've been seeing those blow throughout the area,

01:15that most likely there is power outages happening all over the city and beyond.

01:21Again, many people hunkering down.

01:23There are not many people left on the street at this time.

01:26The only people that we're really seeing on the roadways at this point

01:30are police and city officials

01:32warning people to get inside and stay inside in their homes.

01:36Now, as for me, again, the winds are intense at times.

01:40But wow, Jeff, like I mentioned earlier to you guys,

01:44it really does take your breath away here.

01:46You know, I just think back to 2012 with Hurricane Isaac,

01:502021 to Hurricane Ida.

01:53It brought extreme devastation.

01:55Now, in terms of what we'll see this time around, of course,

01:58we're going to continue to follow this to see what Francine brings in its path.

02:03Right now, most structures are staying in its place.

02:07We haven't seen a ton of movement

02:09when it comes to any buildings being uprooted.

02:12None of that at this time right now.

02:14Again, winds still very strong in this area.

02:16We're going to continue to follow this as the storm pushes through this area.

02:20I think that's all I got for you, Jeff.

02:23I don't know how much more I could speak right now.

02:25This is wild, to say the least.

02:28Nice job putting up with this tremendous conditions right now along the eyewall.

02:32Allie Reed in Kenner, Louisiana,

02:34she's along the shoreline of Lake Pontchartrain with the overwash behind her

02:39and just incredible wind with the eyewall of Hurricane Francine

02:43moving through the area of New Orleans.

02:46And again, the whole shoreline there of the south side of Lake Pontchartrain.

02:50Incredible stuff there.

02:52Great report from Allie.

02:53Nasty, nasty conditions.

02:54So that's why we want everybody to stay in.

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