mike, what is going on with this storm system? well, the storm, chris, is basically a life support like with bonnie, like with cauline, the systems have had a tough time remaining organized and this one may degenerate into an area of low pressure. hurricane hunter aircraft will go back out there early this afternoon. we had rain across southeast louisiana and parts of new orleans has been hit by heavy rain. that is going to be the real impact at this point. some heavy rain, three to five inches along the gulf coast and on the satellite loop, you can see a large, broad circulation but the low-level center is a couple hundred miles south of the florida panhandle and really hard to find. we have this big area spinning of clouds and thundershowers and that s all we have right now going for it. it may just fall apart and fall onshore and bring some rain to the areas that need rain. they did get everybody off the water yesterday ahead of this system. they should get this thing wrapped up i
breaking up, falling apart over the gulf. winds remain at about 30 miles per hour. forecasters say the storm is not going to be gaining strength. mike siedel is in dolphin island, alabama. good morning, mike. explain to us what caused it to fall apart. reporter: it didn t have much going for it. you know, it s never looked like your classic, you know, when you look at the satellite loop and see a big blob spinning around, we never had that. it was all asymetrical. all the storms were on the north and east side. wind shear, that is not something you want to see if you want tropical weather. we don t want tropical weather any year. we had too much wind in the mid and upper levels of the atmosphere. it was barely a tropical storm when it hit florida yesterday with wind gusts 40 to 50 miles an hour. and also dry air got sucked into the system. two major deterrents to intensification. there is the gulf this morning. not looking too bad. there is a boat out there in the
an hour and several hours of heavy rain. more of basically a nuisance, veronica. it moved across the coast and weakened to a depression by 5:00 eastern yesterday. satellite loop this morning shows you what s left. a lot of wind sheer, a lot of wind aloft, there s dry air thrown in there. two big factors keeping the tropical system, bonnie from intensifying and also keeping it from being a hurricane. that was never the forecast. but it was a forecast of a tropical storm going over the oil spill, thus unlike alex, which was 500 miles away about a month ago, they brought everyone inland. we re still going to have impact from this system today and tonight. we re looking at waves 5 maybe 6 or 7 feet. we had little impact on the boom. meanwhile this morning, veronica, it s 85 on the beach, the heat index is 95. as i mentioned, calm winds as the sun comes up. we will have showers and thunderstorms this afternoon. but again, we have dodged this one for the most part.
walking to the room. following a except her. following a search, police consider this a criminal case and have not called the stepmother a person of interest. reports say the hormans are separated and he s moved out of the house with his daughter. tropical storm alex poised to become the first atlantic hurricane. the national weather service reports the storm is 300 miles off the coast of texas. you see it there. can we go back to that? notice the difference in the satellite loop. now that thing looks like a hurricane. see it swirling? you don t see the eye yet but it s clearly coming together the way hurricanes do. alex is on track to reach south texas within a day or two. with us, bill reid, director of the national hurricane center. any indication that storm can change course?
the thunderstorm activity and a little bit more organization. as the satellite loop plays you can see the thunderstorms fire up into the caribbean. and right now the national hurricane center says that 70%, 70% chance of this developing into a tropical cyclone, depression possibly, within the next 48 hours, that the numbers for the percentage have been going up. they started yesterday this time at 30%. now we are up to 70%. it seems even more likely that this will develop and hurricane hunter aircraft is set to fly into the system at 1:00 today. and we will see whether or not they find a closed circulation center. we will put the map into motion. you are looking at google earth. we can show you a multitude of computer models. notice most of them are taking it to the yucatan and possibly into the gulf. some of them are taking it towards mexico and others are turning it to the north. still early to say. more confidence in the forecast when we get the results from that reconnaissance plan