Hurricane Laura is on track to become a major hurricane on Wednesday and make landfall along the Gulf Coast within the next 48 hours. Tropical Storm Marco, which has lost strength, still has the potential for possible storm surges, according to the National Hurricane Center.
Laura became a hurricane early Tuesday morning and is now on track to make landfall in Louisiana and Texas by late Wednesday night or early Thursday morning. Hurricane Laura has already hit Puerto Rico, Cuba and Hispaniola with heavy rainfall, and at least 11 people in the Caribbean have died as a result of the storm, including a 10-year-old Haitian girl.
The NHC already issued tropical storm warnings across portions of the Caribbean. A hurricane watch was just issued to parts of Texas and Louisiana for portions of the Gulf Coast on Tuesday morning. The hurricane center’s long-range tracking has Laura moving northeast across the United States as it exits Louisiana.
Follow Laura's path with the map below. It will be updated when the NHC updates its forecasts.
Marco and Laura are the latest storms of an already busy Atlantic hurricane season. “It looks like the upper Gulf is going to get a one-two punch,” NHC spokesman Dennis Feltgen said. Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards declared a state of emergency Friday in preparation for the two incoming storms.
Tropical Storm Marco became a storm off the coast of Honduras on Friday. It turned to a category one hurricane Sunday night, but its wind speeds fell and it became a tropical storm again Monday morning.
Marco still has the potential to cause heavy damage along the coast, and the NHC had issued storm surge warnings for parts of Louisiana and Mississippi. A storm surge warning indicates there’s a “danger of life-threatening inundation, from rising water moving inland from the coastline.” Marco could bring flooding and rainfall of up to 10 inches along portions of the Gulf Coast.
