Laura slammed into the coast of Louisiana near the town of Cameron early Thursday as a Category 4 hurricane unleashing catastrophic storm surge and punishing winds. The monstrous storm, which packed maximum sustained winds of 150 mph as it barreled ashore, is one of the strongest to ever strike Louisiana in recorded history.
As of Thursday morning, Laura was a Category 1 storm that was moving into central Louisiana about 55 miles southeast of Shreveport. Maximum sustained winds have dropped significantly since landfall but can still cause damage as the storm advances farther inland. The storm was maintaining its forward speed of 16 mph.
Not even 24 hours before landfall, Laura rapidly intensified by 70% in power overnight Tuesday to become a Category 3 hurricane, the first major hurricane of the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season. By 1 p.m. local time, Wednesday, the NOAA Hurricane Hunters found Laura had become an “extremely dangerous” Category 4 hurricane. Winds were 7 mph shy of Category 5 strength at landfall.
Laura’s fury reached the Lake Charles area Wednesday night, knocking its radar out of service as winds gusted past 130 mph in the hurricane’s northern eyewall. This type of radar is built to withstand winds of 134 mph.
Pictures on social media showed extensive damage to one of the city’s high-rises. About half of the glass windows blown out by the wind.
Footage captured from storm chaser Brandon Clement showed Laura’s winds flipping over trucks and RVs. Extreme meteorologist Reed Timmer captured footage of buildings being gutted in downtown Lake Charles by Laura’s hellacious winds.
At least one fatality has been reported in Louisiana due to Hurricane Laura.
Laura’s winds have already wreaked havoc on the power grid across the region. Around 25% of power customers in Louisiana were in the dark on Thursday morning after outages spiked past 525,000. Another 140,000 outages were reported in Texas, according to PowerOutage.US.
The number of outages are expected to increase through Friday with some of the hardest-hit areas possibly being in the dark for over a week.
Louisiana started to experience intense flooding on Wednesday morning near Louisiana State Route 1, among other areas, well before Laura made landfall.
Over 100 miles of Interstate 10 was shut down in Louisiana on Wednesday ahead of Laura’s arrival. It is unclear when the highway will reopen. Power lines were among the debris strewn across the interstate on Thursday morning.
Laura is a history-making storm, according to Colorado State University Meteorologist Phil Klotzbach. Never before has a Category 4 hurricane made landfall in southwestern Louisiana, making it the strongest storm on record by wind intensity for that part of the state, he said. In September 2005, Hurricane Rita roared ashore in a similar area as a Category 3 storm.
Laura is tied for the strongest landfalling hurricane in state history with the 1856 Last Island storm, which also had 150 mph winds, Klotzbach noted on Twitter. Laura also became the seventh named storm of the current season to make landfall on the mainland U.S., a new record for landfalls by the end of August. The previous record was six first set in 1886 and again in 1916.
AccuWeather meteorologists said that Hurricane Laura is a 4 on the AccuWeather RealImpact Scale for Hurricanes, a method devised in 2019 to better assess the overall potential damage a storm can cause. A RealImpact rating of 4 can mean that residents in areas directly impacted by the storm can expect severe, long-lasting flooding from coast to inland. For comparison, both Hurricane Harvey from 2017 and Hurricane Florence of 2018 were retroactively rated as a 4 on the RealImpact Scale.
Locations could be uninhabitable for weeks or months, and roads impassible from large debris. Many bridges, causeways and access routes may become impassable as flood control systems and barriers may become stressed and fail. Major damage to marinas, docks, boardwalks and piers should be expected.
Numerous tornado warnings have been issued across the region, and AccuWeather meteorologists say the tornado dangers will only continue on Thursday as Laura moves inland.
“Unsurvivable storm surge with large and destructive waves will cause catastrophic damage from Sea Rim State Park, Texas, to Intracoastal City, Louisiana, including Calcasieu and Sabine Lakes,” the NHC warned in a tweet on Wednesday, adding that the surge could extend up to 40 miles inland from the coastline.
Storm surge is an above-normal rise in seawater along the coast that’s generated by approaching or landfalling tropical systems, its strength and reach comparing more to a river than a tide.
“A storm surge of that magnitude, combined with wave action, would be high enough to fully devastate the second story of structures located along the coast,” AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Alex Sosnowski said.
Tensions mounted during the week ahead of Laura’s landfall as the storm strengthened along an eerily similar path taken by one particularly notorious hurricane from 2005: Rita, another hurricane retroactively rated a 4 on the RealImpact™ Scale. The similarities stirred old wounds that local officials sought to address.
“This is not Harvey, this is not Imelda, this is not Allison. This is Laura,” Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo said during a press conference, according to ABC13. “Every storm is different, and we urge folks not to use any prior storm as a template for what or will happen. What we need to do is prepare for the worst.”
On Wednesday, Hidalgo signed an disaster declaration for Harris County following Laura’s upgrade to Category 3 storm.
The coronavirus pandemic has indeed brought new challenges to hurricane preparation this season. To adapt to the dual danger of COVID-19 and hurricanes, the Center for Disease Prevention and Control has recommended preparing a “go kit” with items that can help protect you and others from transmission of COVID-19, including hand sanitizer, disinfectant wipes and two masks for each person as social distancing may become more difficult.
The first mandatory evacuation order was issued Tuesday when the hurricane was still a Category 1 storm. Galveston Mayor Craig Brown signed a mandatory evacuation Tuesday at 6 a.m. local time, the order going into effect immediately, and the city urged residents to leave the island by noon Wednesday and to take with them “all family members and pets.” The evacuation orders have since been lifted.
Elsewhere along the Gulf Coast, residents in Louisiana prepared for the storm by boarding up windows. Oil refineries across the Gulf were shut down amid all of the tropical activity over the Gulf — first from Marco and later from Laura. All told, over half a million in Texas and Louisiana were told to flee the approaching storm.
A St. George Island first responder died on Tuesday while trying to save a swimmer, Franklin County Sheriff A.J. Smith reported over Facebook Live. He noted that it had been a “double-red-flag day,” meaning no one should have been in the water to begin with. The identity of the first responder has yet to be made public.
Even after Laura passes through the region, forecasters say that cleanup and recovery efforts may be exacerbated by Mother Nature.
“There will be daily scattered storms around that will lead to cleanup delays through Monday, especially across the hard hit coastal areas of Louisiana,” AccuWeather Meteorologist Tyler Roys said. “Humidity levels will be high and temperatures will climb up into the lower 90s F for many.”
Laura took its time in its beginning stages of development before moving into the warm waters that would serve as a catalyst to its strengthening.
On Friday morning, Aug. 21, Tropical Depression 13 underwent its metamorphosis into a tropical storm just a couple of hundred miles east-southeast of the northern Leeward Islands. The strengthening led to the storm cinching the name Laura from the other tropical depression in the basin and becoming earliest L-named storm on record in the basin. The previous “L” storm record was held by Luis, which formed on Aug. 29, 1995.
Laura first struck the Dominican Republic and Haiti before moving over Cuba by late Sunday, leaving behind damage and flooding while it pushed across the northern Caribbean as a tropical storm. At least 23 people across the island of Hispaniola lost their lives to the storm, including 20 in Haiti and three in the Dominican Republic, The Associated Press reported on Wednesday.
Marco had joined Laura in the Atlantic on Friday, first forming in the western Caribbean before heading into the Gulf of Mexico and strengthening into a hurricane. Marco fizzled out during the beginning of the week as it skirted along the Gulf Coast. However, this wasn’t before it became the earliest “M” storm on record in the basin and unleashed torrential rainfall on the region. The previous “M” storm record was held by the 2005 Hurricane Maria, which developed Sept. 2.
