Francine's powerful winds knocked power lines down across key roadways in Louisiana as it made landfall, as storm chaser Aaron Rigsby showed live on AccuWeather.
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00:00Now, we have team coverage of Francine with crews all along the Gulf Coast.
00:03Let's get the latest from storm chaser Aaron Rigsby in Duloc in Louisiana.
00:10He is in the center part, I believe, center part of Terrebonne County.
00:14And it looks to me, Aaron, that you're in the eye now, you're in the western, eastern
00:19side of that eye wall.
00:20It looks as though while things are still rough and tough, it's not as bad as it was.
00:24Yeah, good evening, Bernie.
00:27That's absolutely correct.
00:28Now, as you can tell behind me, it's not exactly a calm eye, but there is no rain right
00:33now.
00:34So that indicates that I'm approaching that center most portion of the hurricane.
00:36We're still getting these really gusty winds, sometimes at 60, 70 miles an hour.
00:41That's causing dangerous conditions because a lot of that loose debris that's laying around
00:44is just being flung all over the place.
00:46And I've seen a few residents kind of poking their heads out of their houses, assessing
00:50the situation.
00:51So they definitely have to stay clear of those.
00:53But you can see behind me right here, it's kind of lightening up.
00:55You can see some of those darker areas around me, indicating the kind of eye wall area that
00:59we were referring to.
01:00And I'll tell you, this one turned out like a flip of a switch.
01:03We went from 40 to 50 mile an hour winds to a sustain of at least 80 to 90 miles an hour
01:07at times.
01:08And we were really in the thick of it.
01:10Yeah.
01:11And have you seen much damage thus far, Aaron?
01:14We were talking with Tony Laubach, he's in Houma, and he was showing a lot of power lines
01:19beginning to spark.
01:22Have you seen any of that in Duloc?
01:26So in Duloc, there's actually a lot more damage than in Houma.
01:29The gradient was very, very sharp.
01:32And in Duloc, a little bit further to the south, there was a couple of roofs that were
01:36peeled off of homes that sold severed trailer houses that had part of their roof peeled
01:41back and many trees down.
01:42I actually had to drive around a tree that had uprooted onto the roadway, nearly blocking
01:48it completely.
01:49And as you can see right here behind me, this is a cable line right here that's across
01:52the roadway that leads into town here.
01:54This is the main artery that goes from Dubac all the way up to Houma.
01:59So this is blocking the roadway here and nobody can get through at the moment.
02:01So they get this out of the way.
02:03All right.
02:04What is the plan as you go through the rest of this storm?
02:06Are you going to hunker down?
02:07I would assume you're not going to try to travel in this.
02:12So the way that I'm actually going to play this is I'm going to document the center most
02:15portion of the guy.
02:16Before that secondary eyewall comes through, which I want to add, just because it's clear
02:20now that they're up the woods just yet, we still have a second eyewall to come through.
02:25And I'm going to shift my attention toward the tornado threat into the overnight and
02:29morning hours tomorrow into Alabama and Mississippi.
02:32With that dry air kind of pushing into the east side, we can see a situation like with
02:37Barrow where there could be a few of the stronger tornadoes associated with this hurricane,
02:41especially into tomorrow.
02:42All right.
02:43Aaron Rigsby live in Duloc, Louisiana.
02:47That is in Terrebonne Parish.
02:49He's going to be dealing with the western side of that eyewall here shortly.
02:53Aaron stay safe.
02:54We'll talk to you.
02:55Let me get back to the radar.
02:56This is what Aaron was talking about.
02:57He's talking about the western eyewall here.
03:00This is it right in here where the winds start to come back in, although out of a different
03:05direction.
03:06He was dealing with the winds coming in out of the south southeast.
03:09Now he'll be dealing with the winds out of the west northwest.
03:13He was also talking about the tornado threat here.
03:15I want to zoom out a little bit and take you into these feeder bands on the eastern side
03:21of the center of circulation.
03:23In particular, this band coming in toward Gulfport and eventually in toward Hattiesburg.
03:29You see these individual cells.
03:30These already look very suspicious to me.
03:33Here it is.
03:34Here's one.
03:35Here's one.
03:36Here's one.
03:37I'd also keep an eye on this thunderstorm south of Gulfport here.
03:40There's a lot of lightning with that.
03:41I wouldn't be shocked if we had a tornado warning coming out with that here shortly.