Hurricane Laura landfall
At 1 am CDT, Hurricane Laura has made landfall in southwestern Louisiana near Cameron as a category 4 hurricane. Maximum sustained winds were 150 mph, with a minimum central pressure of 938 mb. Potentially catastrophic impacts will continue.
Authorities implored coastal residents of Texas and Louisiana to evacuate, but not everyone did before winds began buffeting trees back and forth in an area that was devastated by Rita in 2005.
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, the system was on track to arrive early Thursday during high tide as the most powerful hurricane to strike the U.S. so far this year.
"It looks like it's in full beast mode, which is not what you want to see if you're in its way," University of Miami hurricane researcher Brian McNoldy said.
Hurricane-force winds extending 60 miles (95 kilometers) from the storm's center neared the coast, forecasters said, and bands of heavy rain fell 30 miles (48 kilometers) from the beach in Lake Charles.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards fretted that the dire predictions were not resonating despite authorities putting more than 500,000 coastal residents under mandatory evacuation orders.
Officials said at least 150 people refused pleas to leave and planned to weather the storm in everything from elevated homes to recreational vehicles in coastal Cameron Parish, which could be completely covered by ocean water.
"It's a very sad situation," said Ashley Buller, assistant director of emergency preparedness. "We did everything we could to encourage them to leave."
Edwards activated the state's entire National Guard. In Lake Charles, 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.
A Category 4 hurricane can render wide areas uninhabitable for weeks or months and knock out power for just as long. The threat of such devastation posed a new disaster-relief challenge for a government already straining under the coronavirus pandemic. The parts of Louisiana that were under evacuation orders included 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 (3 meters) just days ago to twice that size - a height that forecasters said would be especially deadly.
By Wednesday night, Laura was churning about 90 miles (145 kilometers) south of Lake Charles and moving north-northwest at 15 mph (24 kph).
On Twitter, President Donald Trump urged coastal residents to heed officials. Hurricane warnings were issued from San Luis Pass, Texas, to Intracoastal City, Louisiana, and reached inland for 200 miles (322 kilometers). Storm surge warnings extended from Freeport, Texas, to the mouth of the Mississippi River.
For some, the decision to leave home left them with no place to stay. Wary of opening mass shelters during a pandemic, Texas officials instead put evacuees in hotels, but Austin stopped taking arrivals before dawn because officials said they ran out of rooms. Other evacuees called the state's 211 information line and were directed to Ennis, outside Dallas, only to be told after driving hundreds of miles no hotels or vouchers were available.
