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Hurricane Ida: Devastation-Louisiana Residents Begin Clean Up
Double Hurricane Threat -Laura and Marco Likely to Deliver Back-to-Back Landfalls on US Coast; Here's How Rare That Is
Tropical Storm Laura, is moving through the Caribbean islands whilst the other, Tropical Storm Marco, is moving through the Gulf of Mexico.
NHC / AP, 23 AUG 2020.
Laura and Marco are likely headed toward the U.S. Gulf Coast this week. It's not unusual for two storms to hit different parts of the Atlantic Basin at one time.It is very rare, however, for two storms or hurricanes to hit the mainland so close to each other. It's also very rare to have two Gulf storms in progress at once.That last happened in the 1950s.
Two tropical storms are advancing across the Caribbean posing potentially historic threats to the US Gulf Coast, with both projected to reach the coast at or close to hurricane force.
The current projected track for Tropical Storms Laura and Marco by the US National Hurricane Center puts both storms together in the Gulf on Tuesday, with Marco set to hit near the Texas-Louisiana border and Laura set to make landfall a little less than a day later.
Phil Klotzbach, a hurricane researcher at Colorado State University, said two hurricanes had never appeared in the Gulf of Mexico at the same time, according to records going back to at least 1900, and the last time two tropical storms were in the Gulf together was in 1959.
Mr Klotzbach added that the last time two storms made landfall in the US within 24 hours of each other was in 1933.
On Saturday morning, Laura began flinging rain across Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, with the Dominican Republic, Haiti and parts of Cuba expected to be drenched during the day as it moves westwards.
Wanda Vazquez, Puerto Rico’s governor, declared a state of emergency and warned the flooding could be worse than what Tropical Storm Isaias unleashed three weeks ago because the ground was now saturated.
“No one should be out on the streets,” Ms Vazquez said.
Officials said they were most concerned about the thousands of people in Puerto Rico who were still living under blue tarps after 2017's Hurricane Maria and the hundreds of families living along Puerto Rico's southern coast in homes damaged by a string of strong earthquakes this year.
Meanwhile, Marco was strengthening with maximum sustained winds of 65 mph (100 kph) and was expected to become a hurricane later in the day.
The Hurricane Center said it expected the storms to stay far enough apart to prevent direct interaction as the region braces for the peak of the Atlantic hurricane season, which is forecast to be unusually active.
Both storms were expected to bring 3 to 6 inches (8 to 15 cm) of rain to areas they were passing over or near, threatening widespread flooding across a vast region.
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