What you need to know
According to information from the National Weather Service, Francine is expected to become a hurricane before landfall on Sept. 11 along the Louisiana coast.
In the news conference, Abbott urged residents along the coast to be prepared for any changes in the projected path that could more adversely affect communities.
“There is a danger of life-threatening storm surge in various regions, especially in the upper Texas coastline,” Abbott said. “Residents in those areas should follow advice from local officials, including possible evacuation orders. Francine is expected to bring heavy rain and a risk of flash flooding along the coast from South Texas all the way up to the Beaumont region.”
The outlook
The Texas coast is under a storm surge watch until Francine makes landfall, according to the National Weather Service, with a storm surge warning in place from the Bolivar Peninsula to the Sabine Pass.
“While we all want this storm not to impact Texas, Texas has got to be prepared,” Nim Kidd, chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management, said during the news conference. “No matter where this storm makes landfall, the east part of Texas is susceptible to tornadoes and the severe rain, and we want to make sure that our boat squads and our search and rescue teams are ready to support. But I need our citizens to be ready to respond to this as well."
On the other hand
CenterPoint Energy officials hosted an in-person meeting at their Greenspoint facility on Sept. 9 discussing how the utility company was handling operations on Tropical Storm Francine, stating in a news release how they’ve been actively monitoring the system in the Gulf of Mexico since throughout the weekend leading to the meeting.
By the numbers
While the utility officials said the tropical storm seems to be heading east toward Louisiana, they still launched mutual aid and resources for the neighboring state. As for the Greater Houston region, a handful of measures have been put in place as of Sept. 9, including:
- 1,300+ vegetation resources activated, with at least 600 resources activated locally
- 1,850+ local distribution line workers available now
- 1,625+ additional support activated, including mutual aid and damage assessors
- Four station sites planned
CenterPoint officials said they didn’t anticipate rolling blackouts in the area and cited the company’s ongoing resiliency plan efforts post Hurricane Beryl, which devastated the Greater Houston region in July.
Since Beryl, multiple initiatives have been completed in the region as part of CenterPoint Energy’s resiliency plan, including installing more than 1,100 stronger poles and trimming high-risk vegetation across more than 2,000 power lines, according to CenterPoint’s website.
Part of the resiliency plan included launching a new, cloud-based outage tracker on Aug. 1 that officials said was meant to more accurately communicate estimated times for power restoration by county, city and ZIP code.
Residents can access the new tracker here.
