Gulf Coast ports brace for Francine as storm inches closer to Louisiana

Tropical Storm Francine is expected to make landfall in Louisiana on Wednesday as a hurricane, bringing a life-threatening storm surge with it.

Ports along the Gulf Coast were monitoring the storm on Tuesday. Resilinc, a supply chain data monitoring platform, estimates that Francine will impact the aerospace, oil and manufacturing industries across nearly 11,000 sites.

The National Weather Service said the storm was southeast of Brownsville, Texas, early Tuesday morning and moving north. “Considerable” flash flooding is expected, along with rainfall totals of 4 to 8 inches and local amounts of up to 12 inches through Thursday night, forecasters predict.