Tropical Storm Francine formed in the Gulf of Mexico on Monday and was expected to drench the Texas coast with rain before coming ashore in Louisiana as a hurricane on Wednesday night.
"We're going to have a very dangerous situation developing by the time we get into Wednesday for portions of the north-central Gulf Coast, primarily along the coast of Louisiana, where we're going to see the potential for life-threatening storm surge inundation and hurricane force winds," said Michael Brennan, director of the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami.
Heavy rain was already falling in northeastern Mexico and deep South Texas, where some places could get up to 30 centimeters (11.8 inches) into Monday night, Brennan said.
Francine is taking aim at a stretch of coastline that has yet to fully recover since hurricanes Laura and Delta decimated Lake Charles, Louisiana, in 2020, followed a year later by Hurricane Ida. Over the weekend, a 22-story building in Lake Charles that had become a symbol of the destruction was imploded after sitting vacant for nearly four years, its windows shattered and covered in shredded tarps.
The storm surge pushed by Francine could reach as much as 3 meters (10 feet) along a stretch of Louisiana coastline from Cameron to Port Fourchon and into Vermilion Bay. And if the current track holds, the storm could blow northward up the Mississippi River, into the Illinois area by Saturday.
"Francine is expected to bring multiple days of heavy rainfall, considerable flash flooding risk," Brennan said.
Residents of Baton Rouge, Louisiana's riverfront capital, began forming long lines as people filled up their gas tanks and stocked up on groceries. Others went to fill sandbags at city-operated locations to try to keep floodwaters from entering their homes.
"It's crucial that all of us take this storm very seriously and begin our preparations immediately," Baton Rouge Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome said during a news conference Monday morning.
She urged residents to prepare a disaster supply kit, complete with enough food, water and essential supplies for three days.
The hurricane center said Monday morning that Francine was located about 395 kilometers (245 miles) southeast of the mouth of the Rio Grande, and about 770 kilometers (478 miles) south-southeast of Cameron, Louisiana, sustaining top winds of about 85 kilometers (53 miles) per hour.
The storm is expected to be centered just offshore through Tuesday, and then intensify significantly from Tuesday night into Wednesday as it nears the upper Texas coast and Louisiana, according to the hurricane center.
A storm surge watch has been issued from just east of Galveston, Texas, to the Mississippi-Alabama border, while a hurricane watch has been issued for much of the Louisiana coast, from Cameron to Grand Isle.
