Hurricane Laura is now forecast to hit Texas and Louisiana as a 'catastrophic' Category 4 storm

Hurricane Laura is "rapidly" gathering strength in the Gulf of Mexico and is now expected to crash into the Texas-Louisiana border region as a "catastrophic" Category 4 hurricane on Wednesday or early Thursday, the National Hurricane Center warned Wednesday morning. "Some areas when they wake up Thursday morning, they're not going to believe what happened," said Stacy Stewart, a senior hurricane specialist at the hurricane center. "We could see storm surge heights more than 15 feet in some areas." The National Weather Service warned that "power outages will last weeks to possibly months. Most of the area will be uninhabitable for weeks or months."

More than 585,000 people were under evacuation order in Beaumont, Galveston, and Port Arthur, Texas, and Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana. "If you decide to stay, you're staying on your own," said Port Arthur Mayor Thurman Bartie. This is the largest U.S. evacuation of the COVID-19 era, and emergency response officials have incorporated personal protective equipment and social distancing into the evacuation protocol.

Earlier this week, Hurricane Laura killed 20 people in Haiti and three more in the Dominican Republic.

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