This looks bad.
The U.S. is really copping it this year.
Thousands of residents were continuing to evacuate as the outer bands of Hurricane Laura lashed coastal communities in Louisiana and Texas on Wednesday afternoon, with forecasters describing the storm surge from the mammoth category 4 hurricane as “unsurvivable”.
The weather system is due to hit the US Gulf Coast late on Wednesday evening or early Thursday morning, as its center increased in ferocity about 175 miles south of Lake Charles in Louisiana, with sustained wind speeds of 140mph. Hundreds of thousands of people are now under evacuation order.
The governors of Texas and Louisiana continued to urge residents along the affected coastline to leave the area as the National Hurricane Center (NHC) warned of potentially “unsurvivable” storm surges of up to 20ft from Sea Rim state park in Texas to Intracoastal City in Louisiana, a stretch of coastline over 170 miles long.
A storm surge, frequently the most devastating element of a hurricane, is a rise in water level caused by powerful winds and low pressure.
Hurricane Laura over the Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday at 4.50pm ET.
Hurricane Laura over the Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday at 4.50pm ET. Photograph: AP
The storm surge in certain areas could penetrate up to 40 miles inland, the NHC said. Tornado and flash flooding warnings were issued for swaths of Louisiana, Arkansas and east Texas.
The National Weather Service meteorologist Benjamin Schott told a news conference: “The word ‘unsurvivable’ is not one that we like to use, and it’s one that I’ve never used before.”
He added: “To think that there would be a wall of water over two stories high coming on shore is very difficult for most to conceive, but that is what is going to happen.”
“The water is already coming up,” said the National Hurricane Center director, Ken Graham. “If you’re told to leave, you need to do it now because what happens is the water comes in early and you start cutting off your evacuation routes.”
Forecasters were concerned that Laura could make landfall during high tide, making any storm surge even more devastating.
“This is a tough storm – big, powerful and every forecast seems to increase the intensity,” the Louisiana governor, John Bel Edwards, told reporters on Wednesday. “For the first time in many years we’ve activated the entire Louisiana national guard.”
Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, warned that communities now under hurricane watch had only a few hours left to evacuate.
Thousands flee US Gulf coastline as Hurricane Laura prompts fears of 20ft storm surge | Hurricane Laura | The Guardian