Twin hurricanes threaten Gulf Coast
Louisiana expecting rainfall up to 2 feet
NEW ORLEANS — The Gulf Coast braced Sunday for a potentially devastating hit from twin hurricanes as two strong storms swirled toward the U.S from the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean. Officials feared a history-making onslaught of life-threatening winds and coastal flooding, stretching from Texas to Alabama.
A storm dubbed Marco grew into a hurricane Sunday as it moved up the Gulf of Mexico toward Louisiana. Another potential hurricane, Tropical Storm Laura, lashed the Dominican Republic and Haiti and was targeting the same region of the U.S. coast.
The prospect of piggybacked hurricanes was reviving all-toofresh memories of damage caused by Hurricane Katrina, which struck the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29, 2005. The storm has been blamed for as many as 1,800 deaths and levee breaches in New Orleans.
“What we know is there’s going to be storm surge from Marco, we know that that water is not going to recede hardly at all before Laura hits, and so we’ve not seen this before and that’s why people need to be paying particular attention,” Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said Sunday.
With the potential the storms could overlap, parts of Louisiana, especially in south-central portions of the state, could see rainfall up to 2 feet, said Benjamin Schott, meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s Slidell, Louisiana, office.
“There has never been anything we’ve seen like this before, where you can have possibly two hurricanes hitting within miles of each over a 48-hour period,” Schott added.
Along the main drag on the barrier island of Grand Isle, south of New Orleans, Starfish Restaurant manager Nicole Fantiny could see an exodus of people driving off the island.
“They are all packing up and leaving,” she said, speaking of the many people who own homes on the island and come out for vacations and weekend trips.
While Hurricane Marco likely will hit Louisiana first, experts are more worried about the second potentially stronger smack from Laura.
Marco is expected to dance above and below hurricane status over the next day and a half after hitting the 75 mph-wind mark Sunday afternoon.
University of Miami hurricane researcher Brian Mcnoldy said, “I would be very worried if I were there” in New Orleans. It’s not so much either storm as much as the long period of storm surge first from Marco and then from Laura and whether the levee system can withstand the stress, he said.
With Marco and its expected landfall in Louisiana Monday evening, the biggest worry is water not wind. Forecasters expect up to 10 or more inches of rain and storm surges of 4 to 6 feet, with 2 to 4 feet around Lake Pontchartrain.
For Laura, add the wind hazard, bigger storm surge and more heavy rain on top of the first rain to increase flooding on already saturated areas, Mcnoldy said.