Hurricane Laura
-
For those unaware, last night around 1am, Hurricane Laura made landfall in Cameron, LA as a category 4 hurricane with winds of 150 mph. Shortly after that, Laura rolled through Lake Charles and absolutely destroyed the city with 120 mph sustained winds and gusts of over 130 mph. The one silver lining for the area is the storm surge ended up only being around 9’ instead of the predicted 15’-20’ surge. The link below is to a local news station in Lake Charles and their live blog of updates on Laura with pictures and videos of the destruction in Lake Charles and surrounding areas.
https://www.kplctv.com/2020/08/27/live-blog-hurricane-laura-updates-swla/
-
My sister and one of my best friends are in Lafayette. Was a wild night (everyone’s fine though, thankfully).
-
I was born and lived in Sulphur until I was in kindergarten before moving to Houston. Still have a few family friends in the Sulphur/Lake Charles area and I believe they all evacuated once reports came out Laura was going to be worse than Rita was back in 2005.
The Weather Channel was holed up at the Golden Nugget which is on the south side of Lake Charles on the Calcasieu River and one of their reporters, Stephanie Abrams, was on air doing a report last night a little after 1am when glass from the balcony above her shattered and she had to quickly run back inside the hotel for cover.
I really want to drive over and see how the house I lived in when I was kid over there cared, but I really wouldn’t be shocked if it sustained significant wind damage last night.
