‘Unsurvivable’ storm gains strength
Laura will be felt in Southwest Ohio; power outages may last months.
DELCAMBRE, LA.— Laura strengthened Wednesday into a menacing Category 4 hurricane, raising fears of a 20-foot stormsurge 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 87% 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 today as the most powerful hurricane to strike
the U.S. so far this year.
“It looks likeit’s infullbeast mode, which is notwhat you want to see if you’re in its way,” University of Miami hurricane researcher Brian McNoldy said.
Winds were expected to reach 150 mph before landfall, and forecasters said up to 15 inches of rain could fall in some places.
Laura also will be felt in Southwest Ohio, theNational Weather Service inWilmington saidWednesday.
That includes the potential for severe storms Friday afternoon and evening, especially the areas along Interstate 70 and north. Damaging winds are possible then, according to theNWS, something that many residents remember from the remnants of Hurricane Ike as they tore through the region in September 2008.
Onemajor 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.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards fretted that the dire predictions were not resonatingdespite authorities putting more than 500,000 coastal residents under mandatory evacuation orders.
InLakeCharles, Louisiana, National Guard members drove school buses around neighborhoods, offering to pick up families. Across the state line in Port Arthur, Texas, few stragglers boarded evacuation buses, and city officials announced that two C -130 transport planes offered the last chance to leave.
Abbottwarned that people who fail to get out of harm’s way could be cut off from help long after the stormhits.
A Category 4 hurricane can cause damage so catastrophic that power outagesmay last for months in places, and wide areas could be uninhabitable for weeks or months. The threat of such devastation posed a newdisaster-relief challenge for a government already straining to deal with the coronavirus pandemic. Among the parts of Louisiana thatwere under evacuation orders were areas turning up high rates of positive COVID-19 tests.
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.
ByWednesday, Laura had maximum sustained winds of 145mphas it churned about 155 miles (250 kilometers) south of Lake Charles.
“Heed the advice of your local authorities. If they tell you to go, go! Your life depends on it today,” said Joel Cline, tropical program coordinator at the National Weather Service. “It’s a serious day and you need to listen to them.”
On Twitter, President Donald Trump also urged coastal residents to heed local officials.
Forecasters said storm surge topped bywaves could sub merge entire towns. Water wasalreadyrising inthesmall Louisiana community of Holly Beach in the imperiledCameron Parish, which forecasters have warned could become part of the Gulf of Mexico after the stormcomes ashore.
Laura is expected to cause widespread flash flooding in states far from the coast. Flood watches were issued for much of Arkansas, and forecasters said heavy rainfall could arrive by Friday in parts of Missouri, Tennessee and Kentucky. Laura is so powerful that it’s expectedto become a tropical storm again once it reaches the Atlantic Ocean, potentially threatening the Northeast.
The hurricane also threatens a center of the U.S. energy industry. The government said 84% of Gulf oil production and an estimated 61% of natural gas productionwere shut down. Nearly 300 platforms have been evacuated. Consumers are unlikely to see big price hikes however, because the pandemic has decimated demand for fuel.
“If Laura moves further west towardHouston, there will be a much bigger gasoline supply problem,” Oil analyst AndrewLipowsaid, since refineries usually take two to three weeks to resume full operations.
Laura closed in on theU.S. after killing nearly twodozen people on the island of Hispaniola, including 20in Haiti and three in the Dominican Republic, where it knocked out power and caused intense flooding.