Francine forecast to be strengthening hurricane, targets Louisiana landfall

The sixth named tropical storm of the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season has now been named, with tropical storm Francine forecast to intensify in the Gulf of Mexico, become a hurricane and head for the central Louisiana coast while strengthening.

Tropical storm Francine has 50 mph sustained winds and higher gusts, but the forecast is for intensification over the next two days and for landfall within 60 hours at most.

The forecast cone of uncertainty is relatively wide still, ranging from the Texas border to New Orleans, so where exactly a hurricane Francine makes landfall is less clear.

Some forecast models intensify Francine relatively rapidly and show something more intense than the mid-Category 1 storm that the NHC is predicting currently.

Others suggest tropical storm Francine will become a hurricane tomorrow, but then only slowly intensify to around 85 mph sustained winds by landfall.

So, a relatively wide-range of outcomes appears possible still, with the current forecast and NHC outlook suggesting nothing too impactful for reinsurance and the insurance-linked securities (ILS) market, while the outlier stronger scenarios might be more concerning, but remain as outliers for now.

You can see the current location and forecast cone for tropical storm Francine below, from Tomer Burg’s website:

The Gulf of Mexico waters remain very warm, so there is plenty of fuel for tropical storm Francine to intensify. Which means the reinsurance and ILS market will need to watch closely, in case more rapid than expected strengthening does occur.

The NHC said, “At 1000 AM CDT (1500 UTC), the center of Tropical Storm Francine was located near latitude 23.0 North, longitude 94.9 West. Francine is moving toward the north-northwest near 5 mph (7 km/h) and a slow north-northwestward motion is expected for the remainder of the day, followed by a faster motion to the northeast beginning on Tuesday.
On the forecast track, Francine is expected to be just offshore of the northern Gulf Coast of Mexico through Tuesday, and approach the Louisiana and Upper Texas coastline on Wednesday.

“Maximum sustained winds remain near 50 mph (85 km/h) with higher gusts. Gradual intensification is expected over the next day with more significant intensification on Tuesday Night and Wednesday. Francine is expected to become a hurricane before it reaches the northwestern U.S. Gulf Coast on Wednesday.”

You can track this and every Atlantic hurricane season development using the tracking map and information on our dedicated page.