NEW ORLEANS -- High winds and heavy rains buffeted coastal Louisiana and Mississippi late Friday as a disorganized and unpredictable tropical weather system churned through the Gulf of Mexico, forcing cancellation of Juneteenth celebrations in Mississippi and Alabama and threatening Father's Day tourism.
The system, moving north toward Louisiana, carried tropical storm-force sustained winds of 45 mph, but forecasters said it couldn't be classified as a tropical storm because it lacked a single, well-defined center.
"This one is just a sloppy mess. There's multiple circulations within this broad area of circulation," said Benjamin Schott, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Slidell, La.
Forecasters said the storm was likely to dump 5 to 10 inches of rain along parts of the Gulf Coast -- even 15 inches in isolated areas.
By Friday evening, storm clusters were dumping rain at rates as high as 4 inches an hour along parts of the Louisiana and Mississippi coasts, Schott said. Radar showed more heavy rain moving ashore over Alabama and the Florida panhandle.
A nighttime advisory from the National Hurricane Center said the system was about 60 miles south of Morgan City, La., and moving north at 13 mph.
In Louisiana, the threat arrived a month after spring storms and flooding that were blamed for five deaths, and as parts of the state continued a slow recovery from a brutal 2020 hurricane season.
The latest storm was expected to make landfall late Friday or early today, imperiling Father's Day weekend commerce in tourism areas already suffering economic losses from the coronavirus pandemic.
"Of course, with weather like this, you know you can't run, but weekends, holidays, that's when tourists are coming down here," said Louisiana swamp tour boat captain Darrin Coulon. He canceled tours Friday and hoped for better weather today and Sunday as he secured his boats in Crown Point.
Worries were similar for Austin Sumrall, owner and chef at White Pillars Restaurant and Lounge in Biloxi, Miss. He had 170 reservations on the books for Sunday, but was concerned that some patrons would cancel. "We saw, especially last year, the rug can get jerked out from under you pretty quickly," he said.
A tropical-storm warning extended from Morgan City, La., to the Okaloosa-Walton County line in the Florida panhandle. Coastal surge flooding was possible, and flash flood watches extended from southeast Louisiana into the Florida panhandle and well inland into Mississippi, Alabama and parts of central and northern Georgia.
"I hope it just gets in and gets out," said Greg Paddie, manager of Tacky Jack's, a restaurant at Alabama's Orange Beach.
Mayor Jeff Collier of Dauphin Island off Alabama's coast, said officials had already contacted debris removal contractors and made sandbags available to residents. "We're pretty well prepared to the extent that we can be," Collier said. "This is not our first rodeo."
Disappointment was evident in the voice of Seneca Hampton, an organizer of the Juneteenth Freedom Festival in Gautier on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. He spent weeks arranging food trucks, vendors, a bounce house, face painting and free hamburgers and hot dogs for the event, which was highly anticipated both because last year's fest was canceled by the pandemic and because Juneteenth has just been designated a federal holiday.
"It's something that means a lot to people, and there were people that were bummed out, like, 'I already had in my mind I was coming out there to celebrate,'" said Hampton.
The festival was postponed until next month, while a Juneteenth event in Selma, Ala., was postponed until August.
There have already been two named storms during the 2021 Atlantic hurricane season. Meteorologists expect the season to be busy, but not as crazy as the record-breaking 2020 season.
Mexico, while getting rain from the storm in the Gulf, also was threatened by a storm in the Pacific. Tropical Storm Dolores formed Friday morning and was expected to make landfall on Mexico's west-central coast this evening, possibly near hurricane strength, according to the National Hurricane Center.
Information for this article was contributed by Leah Willingham, Jay Reeves, Chevel Johnson and Stacey Plaisance of The Associated Press.
