Texas, Louisiana

Bracing for the storm: Nearly 1.5 million residents of southeastern Texas and western Louisiana were told to evacuate this week as Hurricane Laura barreled toward the region with a ferocity not seen there in a decade. With maximum winds potentially exceeding 120 mph, Laura was forecast to make landfall late Wednesday night, as The Week went to press, as a “catastrophic” Category 4 hurricane. Depending on the timing of its arrival, the storm was expected to whip high tide into surges of 10 to 15 feet and push Gulf waters as far as 30 miles inland, or all the way to cities such as Lake Charles. Heavy rains of 5 to 10 inches were expected, although that’s far short of the 50 inches dumped by Hurricane Harvey, which arrived almost three years ago to the day. “This will be moving, unlike Harvey, which stalled,” said Josh Lichter, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. “The threat here is wind and storm surge.”