Hurricane Delta roared near Creole, Louisiana as a Category 2 storm.
Lake Charles:
Hurricane Delta made landfall on the Louisiana coast, packing fierce winds and a “deadly” storm surge – and chasing residents who were still rebuilding themselves after a devastating storm less than two months ago.
Delta became the 10th major storm of the year to make landfall in the United States, which forecasters called a record.
It roared ashore on Friday near Creole, Louisiana as a Category 2 storm on a scale of five, with winds of 100 miles per hour (160 kilometers per hour), before weakening to a tropical storm early Saturday.
“Destructive winds and a potentially fatal storm surge continue over parts of southern Louisiana,” the Miami-based National Hurricane Center (NHC) said, adding that a monitoring site was reporting a storm surge of 2 , 4 meters above the ground.
Delta – which the NHC said weakened to a tropical storm early on Saturday – caused widespread blackouts in the state.
In Lake Charles, a town in southwest Louisiana that was hit hard by Hurricane Laura on August 20, streets were deserted Friday as steady rain fell before Delta arrived.
The city is still in disarray in the face of the more powerful Laura, who was Category 4 and who ripped the roofs of the houses and uprooted the trees. The streets are still littered with debris.
“I don’t even know if we’ll have a house when we get back,” resident Kimberly Hester said.
“I pray to God every night we can at least have a house to come home to.”
Arthur Durham, 56, was finishing covering the windows of his house with plywood as protection against flying debris.
“I stayed for the last one. I’m pretty well prepared. I have a back-up generator, tools, equipment … I’m quite autonomous,” he told AFP, adding: ” I’m used to this. “
American Gulf beaten
Earlier, Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards announced that 2,400 National Guard members had been mobilized to help residents.
Hurricane Delta will hit “in the area of our state that is least prepared to take it,” he said Thursday evening.
In Lake Charles, Shannon Fuselier drilled plywood into the windows of a friend’s house.
Many neighborhood homes are covered in tarps from hurricane damage, and the house Fuselier was working on had previously suffered roof damage from a fallen tree and shattered windows during Laura.
“The branches and leaves don’t do a lot of damage,” said Fuselier, 56. “These are pieces of metal, steel, other people’s window frames, store signs, nails.”
Fuselier said she was staying because she didn’t think the storm was strong enough for her to flee.
Edwards has previously warned that Delta could sweep up old debris and launch it like missiles.
Traffic was blocked Thursday as people left Charles Lake.
Terry Lebine was evacuated to the city of Alexandria, about 150 kilometers to the north, during the last hurricane, and was ready to depart.
“It’s exhausting,” she told AFP. “I have my mother, she is 81 years old and is not in better health. Right after we get home from Laura, we have to go back to Delta. We got home a good two to three weeks.
The storm on Wednesday knocked down trees and destroyed power lines in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula as it swept through the western Gulf of Mexico. But the area has escaped major destruction and no deaths have been reported.
Delta is the 26th named storm of an unusually active hurricane season in the Atlantic.
In September, meteorologists were forced out of the Greek alphabet to name Atlantic storms for only the second time, after the 2020 hurricane season surpassed their usual list, ending with Tropical Storm Wilfred.
As the ocean’s surface warms due to climate change, hurricanes become more powerful. Scientists say there will likely be an increase in powerful Category 4 and 5 storms.
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
