Hurricane Marco and Tropical Storm Laura dealt a devastating blow to the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico on Sunday, forcing thousands of coastal residents to evacuate.
Marco, which escalated into a hurricane on Sunday, is projected to reach the coast off the Louisiana coast on Monday.
Laura, who hit the Dominican Republic and Haiti earlier Sunday and killed at least 10 people, is tentatively set to escalate into a hurricane before hitting Texas and Louisiana on Thursday.
Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards warned that tropical hurricane winds were expected on Monday and recommended that residents evacuate no later than Sunday evening. According to Chris Kerr, a meteorologist at DTN, Laura could develop into a Category 2 or 3 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson 5-step hurricane scale and move west, closer to Houston.
Laura and Marco are among the first named storms recorded in the Atlantic Basin this year. The 2020 Atlantic hurricane season could presumably be bigger than it was in 2005, when Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans.
In the Dominican Republic, at least 3 people were killed, including a mother and her 7-year-old son, as walls collapsed. Authorities said Laura cut power to more than a million people in the country, forced more than 1,000 residents to evacuate, and destroyed several homes along the Isabela River.
The Haitian authorities reported seven deaths. At least two of them died in the flood, and a ten-year-old girl was crushed by a tree that fell on her house.
The storms have also heightened concerns about the spread of COVID-19.
