Post by montegobayjobs on Aug 26, 2020 22:23:02 GMT
This GOES-16 GeoColor satellite image taken Wednesday, August 26, 2020, at 2:40 p.m. EDT., and provided by NOAA, shows Hurricane Laura over the Gulf of Mexico. Hurricane Laura strengthened Wednesday into “an extremely dangerous Category 4 hurricane," The National Hurricane Center said. Laura is expected to strike Wednesday night into Thursday morning along the Louisiana-Texas border. (NOAA via AP)
DELCAMBRE, Louisiana AP) — Laura strengthened Wednesday into a menacing Category 4 hurricane, raising fears of a 20-foot storm surge that forecasters said would be “unsurvivable” and capable of sinking entire communities.
Authorities implored coastal residents of Texas and Louisiana to evacuate and worried that not enough had fled.
The storm grew nearly 70% in power in just 24 hours to a size the National Hurricane Center called “extremely dangerous.”
Drawing energy from the warm Gulf of Mexico waters, the system was on track to arrive late Wednesday or early Thursday as the most powerful hurricane to strike the US so far this year.
“It looks like it’s in full beast mode,” said University of Miami hurricane researcher Brian McNoldy.
“Which is not what you want to see if you’re in its way.”
One major Louisiana highway already had standing water as Laura’s outer bands moved ashore with tropical storm-force winds.
Thousands of sandbags lined roadways in tiny Lafitte, and winds picked up as shoppers rushed into a grocery store in low-lying Delcambre.
Trent Savoie, 31, said he was staying put.
“With four kids and 100 farm animals, it’s just hard to move out,” he said.
With time running short, both Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards fretted that the dire predictions were not resonating despite authorities putting more than 500,000 coastal residents under mandatory evacuation orders.
In Lake Charles, Louisiana, National Guard members drove school buses around neighbourhoods, offering to pick up families.
Just across the state line in Port Arthur, Texas, stragglers boarding buses were few and far between.
The National Hurricane Center kept raising its estimate of Laura’s storm surge, from 10 feet just a couple of days ago to twice that size — a height that forecasters said would be especially deadly.
A Category 4 hurricane can cause damage so catastrophic that power outages may last for months in places, and wide areas could be uninhabitable for weeks or months.
The threat of such devastation posed a new disaster-relief challenge for a government already straining to deal with the coronavirus pandemic.
Among the parts of Louisiana that were under evacuation orders were areas turning up high rates of positive COVID-19 tests.
By Wednesday afternoon, Laura had maximum sustained winds of 140 miles per hour as it churned about 200 miles from Lake Charles, moving northwest at 16 miles per hour.
Forecasters predict winds will reach at least 145 mph winds but may weaken slightly before landfall.