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Hurricane Laura’s winds produced more damage than its storm surge as it hammered portions of Louisiana, killing at least six people. Laura came ashore as a Category 4 storm early Thursday near the Texas border, knocking out power to hundreds of thousands. Laura made landfall with sustained winds of 150 mph, devastating southern Louisiana communities for miles.
Laura was later downgraded to a tropical storm about 35 miles south of Little Rock, Arkansas, with sustained winds of 40 mph as of Thursday evening. In addition to widespread reports of wind damage, some communities were affected from storm surge and flooding. More than 843,000 customers in Texas and Louisiana were without power Thursday evening, according to PowerOutages.us.
As Laura makes its way northeast, “flooding rainfall and tropical force winds” were spreading over parts of Arkansas, the National Hurricane Center said Thursday, and Gov. Asa Hutchinson asked residents to “pay attention to the weather.” Laura still could deliver damaging wind gusts in parts of northern Louisiana and Arkansas though Thursday evening, the National Hurricane Center said, and was expected to drop another 4 to 8 inches of rain across parts of Louisiana, Arkansas and Mississippi.
Laura is the seventh named storm to make landfall in the US so far this year, a record for the most to do so before the end of August. There have been four tropical storms and three hurricanes.
