Drenching rains still a menace from tropical storm Barry

The New York Times

July 14, 2019 10:09 PM

The center of Tropical Storm Barry was about 80 miles southeast of Shreveport, Louisiana, early Sunday and not going anywhere in a hurry. All of southeast Louisiana remains under a flash flood watch until 7 p.m. Sunday because of how slowly Barry is moving.

Drenching Rains Still a Menace From Tropical Storm Barry

New Orleans appears to have been spared the biblical deluge that forecasters thought it might get. The city’s total through Sunday night is now expected to top out at 6 inches or so; at one point there were forecasts that as much as 20 inches might fall. Tropical storm warnings and storm surge warnings for New Orleans have been canceled.

The heaviest rainfall is now expected in northeastern Louisiana and western Mississippi, the National Weather Service said, where 4 to 8 more inches of rain are forecast. A flash flood warning is also in effect for Mississippi’s capital, Jackson.

Danielle Manning, a National Weather Service meteorologist, said the bulk of those potential rains will fall over the next 24 hours. Though some areas could still see very heavy rain, she said, “I would say that the probability of widespread significant flooding is lower than what we initially anticipated.”

About 145,000 households and businesses had no power Sunday morning, according to the tracking site PowerOutage.US.

There was only scattered light rain Sunday morning in St. Mary Parish, which includes Morgan City, a small town about 20 miles from the southern coast of Louisiana where officials had been braced for a direct hit from the storm.

Officials there continued to express hope that the parish would be spared the worst, as it has been during several other recent Gulf storms.

“I think we’re in better shape than we were yesterday,” said David Naquin, the homeland security director for the parish. “If we just dodge the rain, we’ll be all right. We’ve got some rain coming today. We just don’t know how much we’re going to get.”

There had been no injuries or substantial structural damage in the parish by early Sunday, officials said. Even so, the authorities said they were forced to evacuate a small community outside Franklin, a town of about 9,000, because of what Naquin called “water issues.”

The New York Times