AccuWeather's Alex DaSilva warns of a major flood risk facing millions of people as the tropical rainstorm continues to close in on the state of Louisiana as of July 17.

Louisiana

A tropical rainstorm is approaching Louisiana, prompting warnings of a major flood risk for millions of residents. While the storm has struggled to organize and is unlikely to develop into a tropical depression or storm, its slow movement is expected to result in prolonged heavy rainfall, particularly across southern Louisiana.

Meteorologists report that rainfall totals could reach 4 to 8 inches, with some areas potentially seeing up to 16 inches. The rainstorm is expected to linger for several days, increasing the threat of flooding. The current tropical season is running ahead of average in terms of named storms, but no hurricanes have formed yet. Experts advise continued monitoring as the rainy pattern may persist along the Gulf Coast.

Millions at risk as tropical rainstorm approaches Louisiana

This time yesterday, Alex, we were like we were concerned that could the low-level center form a little farther to the south as we had a growing area convection. That never really occurred and the low-level center, what one there is, continued to remain very close to land and that boy did that limit its ability to get organized. Yeah, it certainly did. The low-level center would have to be over the ocean in order for tropical intensification to occur and we just really never saw that. It had a brief chance I think last night and early this morning, but the thunderstorms around the center of circulation kind of collapsed earlier. So I think the chance of this becoming a tropical storm or even a tropical depression maybe 10 percent at this point. Very, very low. It's hard to find actually where the center of circulation is right now. It looks like it's just southwest of Mobile right now. Might be near the coast or just offshore at the current time. Generally moving to the west right now, but you can see where all the showers and thunderstorms are. Well displaced to the south and to the west of where we think that center of circulation is located. There's also been a concern that the tropical rainstorm will start to slow down later today and tonight. Yeah, it's already starting to do that I think right now. It's starting to lose some of that push that it was getting from the Bermuda High over the last 24 hours or so. So it's generally going to be moving off to the west over the next couple of hours and should make landfall here in the next few hours. But yeah, it's going to be an awfully slow movement here over the next couple of days. And I think we're really going to be able to squeeze out a lot of that rainfall, especially across southern Louisiana. As we've been talking about all morning, 48 inches of rain with an AccuWeather local storm max of 16 with the thunderstorms lingering until Saturday. Listen, it's been a busy stretch here, Alex, over the last two weeks. Yeah, it certainly has. We've been going down the list here, 1-2-3. You know, there was a very brief chance we could have gotten Dexter earlier this morning. Didn't pan out, but still well above average for the number of named storms so far this tropical season. The average fourth named storm is August 15th. So we're about a month or so ahead of schedule, maybe a little bit less than that at this point. But typically we don't even see our first hurricane yet. We haven't seen our first hurricane yet and typically that's not until August 11th. We still have a long way to go in the tropical season. The tropical Atlantic is shut down for business, which is typical for this time of year. But boy, there's a lot of dry air from the west coast of Africa all the way toward the Caribbean here this morning. Yeah, typically in June and July, it's really hard to get stuff to develop way out in the Atlantic Barrel last year. If you remember, that was such an anomaly, such a rare event to get a storm that was that strong that far to the east. So this is more typical of the main development region early in the tropical season. Lots of dusty dry air indicated by those dark orange and yellow colors. So it doesn't look like anything's going to be in any rush out across the main development region over the next week or so. You know, I'm a pattern recognition guy. You know that I've been doing this a long time. And what I find amazing is when you look at the pattern next week, what do you see? You see an upper high where across the Tennessee Valley, parts of the southeast. And you know, you've heard me say this all the time. Where do we look for tropical development, if any, underneath the belly of the high? And this is an area you guys have highlighted this morning. Yeah, honestly, it's almost like deja vu. This is going to be a similar situation to what we're dealing with with this tropical rainstorm. It's an old front that kind of moves off the east coast on the tail end. You get a little bit of spin and then it follows that area of high pressure to the south and to the west. And so you're going to get a very similar situation, I think, where, you know, we're going to be watching for a chance of development. But again, the same factors are going to be at play here. If the center of circulation is too close to the coast, it likely won't develop. If it moves a little bit further to the south in the Gulf, then you have a little bit of a better chance. But either way, I think it's going to be a rainy pattern overall next week across some of those Gulf Coast states. AccuWeather lead hurricane expert Alex DaSilva, thanks for joining us again here on AccuWeather Early.

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