Global Prayer Alerts

Forecasters say Hurricane Laura could strengthen to a powerful Category 4 as it moves towards an expected landfall on the U.S. Gulf Coast Wednesday night or Thursday morning.

As of Wednesday morning, Laura was located 510 kilometers from the city of Lake Charles, Louisiana and 540 kilometers from the city of Galveston, Texas, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center. The storm has maximum sustained winds of 175 kilometers an hour, making it a Category 2 on the five-level scale that measures a hurricane’s potential destructiveness.    

Hurricane and storm surge warnings are in effect for the northwestern Gulf Coast.   

Laura could also bring up to 30 centimeters of rain to some parts of Louisiana and Texas.

More than half a million people along the coastal regions of Texas and Louisiana have been ordered to evacuate their homes.  A voluntary evacuation advisory has also been issued for the city of Houston, which was devastated by Hurricane Harvey three years ago this week.

Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards and Texas Governor Greg Abbot have issued emergency declarations for their states.  

Hurricane Laura is also threatening crude oil and natural gas production along the Gulf Coast.  More than 300 offshore facilities have been shut down and evacuated, stopping over 80% of Gulf oil production.  

Laura is blamed for at least 11 deaths across the island of Hispaniola, shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic, where it caused flooding Monday evening and knocked out power. The storm also took out power to hundreds of thousands of customers in Puerto Rico.