Category 3 Hurricane Delta starting to weaken ahead of Louisiana landfall
Hurricane Delta, now a large Category 3 storm, appears to be weakening a bit ahead of its Louisiana landfall later Friday.
For the next few hours, the National Hurricane Center said, there’s a window of time where the powerful storm might weaken slightly over cooler waters just before coming ashore.
“Increasing vertical shear and decreasing oceanic heat content along the forecast track should cause Delta to continue to weaken before landfall. However, there will still be significant impacts from winds and storm surge,” forecasters warned.
As of the 2 p.m. update, Delta had 115 mph winds and was moving due north at 13 mph. The broad storm’s hurricane-force winds reached 40 miles out from the center and its tropical-storm-force winds stretched out 160 miles from the center.
It’s predicted to slow to 110 mph, a Cat 2, before landfall. Once inland, it will rapidly slow down and dissipate by Sunday.
As Delta closes in, the predicted track is very similar to Hurricane Laura, a Cat 4 hurricane that hit Louisiana and Texas in August and displaced thousands. Photos taken by the Army Cops of Engineers in late September show hundreds of blue tarps instead of roofs in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Hurricane Delta is predicted to pass within a few miles of the city.
Delta could bring up to 11 feet of storm surge and 15 inches of rain to some spots in Louisiana, and east Texas could see up to 10 inches of flooding rain and several feet of storm surge.
Elsewhere in the Atlantic, the hurricane center is tracking a tropical wave several hundred miles south of the Cabo Verde Islands. It had a 0% chance of forming over the weekend and a 20% chance of forming next week, as of the 8 a.m. update.
