Focus shifts to Hurricane Laura
With Tropical Storm Marco weakening, the Gulf Coast is preparing for potential damage from the Cat 3 storm.
NEW ORLEANS — Tropical Storm Marco began falling apart Monday, easing one threat to the Gulf Coast but setting the stage for the arrival of Laura as a potentially supercharged Category 3 hurricane with winds topping 110 mph and a storm surge that could swamp towns.
The two-storm combination could bring a history-making onslaught of wind and coastal flooding from Texas to Alabama, all complicated by the coronavirus pandemic, forecasters said.
Still a tropical storm, Laura churned just south of Cuba after killing at least 11 people in the Dominican Republic and Haiti, where it knocked out power and caused flooding in the two nations that share the island of Hispaniola.
The deaths reportedly included a 10-year-old girl whose home was hit by a tree and a mother and son who were crushed by a collapsing wall.
Laura was not expected to weaken over land before moving into warm, deep Gulf waters that forecasters said could bring rapid intensification.
“We’re only going to dodge the bullet so many times. And the current forecast for Laura has it focused intently on Louisiana,” Gov. John Bel Edwards said.
Shrimp trawlers and fishing boats were tied up in a Louisiana harbor ahead of the storms. Red flags warned swimmers away from the pounding surf.
Both in-person classes and virtual school sessions required because of the coronavirus pandemic were canceled in some districts.
A food bank that has been twice as busy as normal since March providing meals to people affected by the pandemic prepared to shut down for a few days because of the weather, but not before distributing a last round of provisions to the needy.
“We’re very tired,” said Lawrence DeHart, director of Terrebonne Churches United Foodbank in Houma.
State emergencies were declared in Louisiana and Mississippi, and shelters were being opened with cots set farther apart, among other measures designed to curb infections.
“The virus is not concerned that we have hurricanes coming, and so it’s not going to take any time off and neither can we,” Edwards said.
As Marco continued to collapse Monday, the National Hurricane Center canceled all tropical storm watches and warnings. Marco’s winds died down to 40 mph as it sloshed southeast of the mouth of the Mississippi River.
By midday Monday, an airplane monitoring the system could only find a small area of wind strong enough to keep Marco a tropical storm.
Because of the slow disintegration, the hurricane center said sustained tropical storm winds would probably not reach the northern Gulf coast.
Hampered by strong crosswinds that were decapitating the storm, Marco was expected to lose tropical storm designation late Monday, the hurricane center said.
While Marco weakened, Laura’s potential got stronger, and forecasters raised the possibility of a major hurricane that would pummel western Louisiana and eastern Texas from late Wednesday into Thursday.
Together, the storms could bring a total of 2 feet of rain to parts of Louisiana, perhaps raising the storm surge to more than 10 feet along the Louisiana coast line and pushing water 30 miles up the rivers in a worst-case scenario, said meteorologist Benjamin Schott, who runs the National Weather Service office in Slidell.
The double punch comes days before the Aug. 29 anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, which breached the levees in New Orleans, flattened much of the Mississippi coast and killed as many as 1,800 people in 2005.
For the residents of the Louisiana coast, “they’re certainly lucky that Marco is not worse than it is,” said University of Miami hurricane researcher Brian McNoldy. “This will come and go, and they can get ready for Laura. That’ll be the main attraction.”