Hundreds of thousands of people were ordered to evacuate the Gulf coast on Tuesday, as Laura strengthened into a hurricane that forecasters said could slam into Texas and Louisiana as a major storm with ferocious winds and deadly flooding.
Laura passed Cuba after killing nearly two dozen on the island of Hispaniola, 20 in Haiti and three in the Dominican Republic, where it knocked out power and caused intense flooding.
More than 385,000 were told to flee the Texas cities of Beaumont, Galveston and Port Arthur, and still more were ordered to evacuate low-lying south-western Louisiana, where forecasters said as much as 13ft of storm surge topped by waves could submerge entire communities.
The National Hurricane Center (NHC) projected that Laura would become a category 3 hurricane before making landfall late on Wednesday or early on Thursday, with winds of around 115mph capable of inflicting devastating damage.
“The waters are warm enough everywhere there to support a major hurricane, category 3 or even higher. The waters are very warm where the storm is now and will be for the entire path up until the Gulf coast,” the NHC deputy director, Ed Rappaport, said.
Ocean water was expected to push on to land along more than 450 miles of coast from Texas to Mississippi. Hurricane warnings were issued from San Luis Pass, Texas, to Intracoastal City, Louisiana, and storm surge warnings from the Port Arthur, Texas, flood protection system to the mouth of the Mississippi River.
As of Tuesday morning, Laura was 585 miles south-east of Lake Charles, Louisiana, traveling north-west at 16mph. Its peak winds were 75mph. The NHC nudged its forecast track a bit farther west as computer simulations pushed the storm closer to Texas.
There was little to keep Laura from turbocharging. Nearly all forecasts showed rapid strengthening at some point in the next couple of days.
The deaths in Haiti and the Dominican Republic reportedly included a 10-year-old girl whose home was hit by a tree and a mother and young son crushed by a wall.
On top of storm surge that could penetrate miles inland, as much as 15in of rain could fall in some parts of Louisiana, said Donald Jones, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Lake Charles, Louisiana, near the bullseye of Laura’s projected path.
Marco, a system that approached land ahead of Laura, weakened into a remnant just off Louisiana’s shore. Satellite images showed a disorganized cluster of clouds, what meteorologists call “a naked swirl”, Jones said.
But Laura powered up. The crew of a hurricane hunter plane confirmed that Laura became a hurricane with top winds of 75mph shortly after passing between the western tip of Cuba and Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula.
The NHC warned people not to focus on the details of the official forecast since storm surge, wind and heavy rain will extend far from Laura’s center.
In Galveston and Port Arthur, mandatory evacuation orders went into effect at 6am. People planning on entering official shelters were told to bring just one bag of personal belongings each, and a mask to reduce the spread of coronavirus.
“If you decide to stay, you’re staying on your own,” Port Arthur’s mayor, Thurman Bartie, said.
Officials in Houston asked residents to prepare supplies in case they lose power for a few days or need to evacuate homes along the coast. Some in the area are still recovering from the devastation of Hurricane Harvey three years ago.
Emergencies were declared in Louisiana and Mississippi, and shelters opened with cots set farther apart, among other measures designed to curb coronavirus infections.
Laura’s arrival comes just days before the 29 August anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, which breached the levees in New Orleans, flattened much of the Mississippi coast and killed as many as 1,800 in 2005. Hurricane Rita then struck south-west Louisiana that 24 September, as a category 3 storm.