Louisiana avoided Laura’s ‘wall of water’? Not so, says forecaster

Lake Charles, La., Aug. 29: The 20- foot high “unsurvivable” wall of water Hurricane Laura was forecast to send onto the Louisiana coast showed up despite widespread reports of a lower peak, authorities said on Friday, rejecting criticism that they had raised too much alarm.

The highest surge hit about 15 miles east of where Laura was forecast to make landfall but it “wobbled” at the last moment. That slight change likely saved the city of Lake Charles, said Jamie Rhome, head of the storm surge team at the National Hurricane Center (NHC).

Most US media played up a nine- foot surge recorded by a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration observation station near Cameron, Louisiana, and the NHC was criticized for perhaps raising too much alarm. There is just one problem, Rhome said.

“It’s wrong. That reporting is based off a single observation station in Cameron Parish that didn’t come close to measuring the peak storm surge which occurred at 10 or 15 miles east of there,” he said. Fresh data on Friday from an Army Corps of Engineer gauge 15 miles east indicates that the storm surge was right at the 15- to 20-feet forecast that was Rhome’s highest in his 20-year career, he said.

An exact reading would soon be released after the data and gauge are fully analyzed, Rhome said.

“We’re finding out the storm surge was really 15 to 20 feet,” Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards confirmed to reporters on Friday after flying over the hardest-hit areas.

Rhome said it would be unfair to accuse NHC forecasters - who warned of an “unsurvivable storm surge” the day before Laura made landfall — or local and state leaders for raising alarm about storm surges.

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