Grand Isle issues a mandatory evacuation
July 11, 2019
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July 11, 2019
There is officially a tropical storm in the Gulf of Mexico.
The National Hurricane Center has found surface level winds greater than 39 mph at the center of the tropical disturbance in the Gulf of Mexico, thus officially making it Tropical Storm Barry.
The storm is spinning west at 5 mph just off the Louisiana coast. It’s located at 27.8 N, 88.7 W. Maximum sustained winds are at 40 mph.
The National Hurricane Center official track for Barry has shifted overnight from a western Louisiana coast landfall to a more central Louisiana coast landfall – far closer to Lafourche and Terrebonne.
The track now has the storm landing near New Iberia at 7 a.m. on Saturday morning. It is forecast to be a Category 1 hurricane at the time of its landfall.
But weather experts say there is a lot of variance still in Barry’s track because of the weak steering currents in the Gulf and also the small core of the storm.
“Bigger storms are usually easier to track than little storms,” Fox 8 Chief Meteorologist David Bernard said. “The smaller storms tend to be more easily influenced by changes in the atmosphere and there is far more margin for error in terms of where it can go.”
Check back with HoumaTimes.com for further updates.
