Hurricane Laura and the devastation after. Photo: NOAA
At around 2 a.m. last night, Hurricane Laura made landfall near the Texas/Louisiana border as a category four storm, The New York Times reports. Described as one of the strongest storms to ever make landfall in the U.S., Laura delivered up to 150 mile-per-hour winds and what is being described as a “catastrophic” storm surge of floodwaters. Nearly 1.5 million residents of the two states were under evacuation orders and according to PowerOutage.us, around 620,000 people in Louisiana and 150,000 in Texas were without power as of this morning.
Areas such as Lake Charles in Louisiana sustained heavy damage, with social media displaying videos of shattered windows in office buildings, trashed shopping malls, and flattened homes. WVUE Fox 8, a local news outlet for New Orleans shared aerial footage (above) of flattened homes surrounded by water in southwest Louisiana. New Orleans, located more to the southeast in Louisiana was largely spared by the storm. Phillip Klotzbach, a meteorologist with Colorado State University ranked Laura as one of the two strongest storms to hit Louisiana in more than 160 years along with the Last Island hurricane in 1856.
Table of 11 strongest #hurricanes to make landfall in Louisiana on record (since 1851) based on maximum sustained wind. #HurricaneLaura is tied with Last Island (1856) for strongest Louisiana landfalling #hurricane on record – 150 mph max winds. pic.twitter.com/4ojOIjPYzS
— Philip Klotzbach (@philklotzbach) August 27, 2020
After such devastating damage it’s the least of our worries, but with regards to swell typically associated with hurricanes and tropical storms — just about the only times the Gulf Coast gets waves — if you didn’t catch it before Laura made landfall or perhaps early this morning, you’ve probably missed the window. According to Surfline, Texas and Louisiana experienced waves in the 8-12-foot range yesterday evening and early this morning, dropping to 2-3 feet by the end of the day, and surf cams for Texas seem to confirm that fact.
Our thoughts go out to those impacted by this historic storm.
