Hurricane Delta: Louisiana declares state of emergency as it braces for storm

People in Louisiana are bracing themselves for flooding and dangerously high winds for the sixth time this year, as 2020’s extraordinary hurricane season sent yet another major storm in the state’s direction, amid Earth’s accelerating climate crisis.

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Hurricane Delta strengthened rapidly to a category 4 event on Tuesday before easing back to a category 2, with sustained winds of up to 100mph. The hurricane, which is churning away in the Gulf of Mexico, is expected to crunch into the US gulf coast on Friday and cause potential flooding in Texas and Louisiana.

John Bel Edwards, the governor of Louisiana, has declared a state of emergency for what he called “an incredibly dangerous storm.” The governor said he didn’t expect widespread evacuations but that flooding and wind damage will extend far inland.

Delta is expected to hit areas around the city of Lake Charles that were devastated when Hurricane Laura tore through the region in August, killing at least 28 people. Thousands of residents remain displaced from their homes due to the previous storm. “This season has been relentless,” Edwards said. “Prepare for the worst. Pray for the best.”

The hurricane is the 25th named storm in what has been an unusually active Atlantic hurricane season. Meteorologists exhausted the 21 names planned for the year’s storms and are now dipping into the Greek alphabet for names for just the second time. With more than a month remaining in the hurricane season, it’s likely there will be more major storms than any year on record, surpassing 2005, when Katrina decimated parts of New Orleans and the southern coast.

Scientists say that climate change is making storms more powerful by adding heat to the ocean and more moisture to the atmosphere. The rapid intensification of Delta, like other recent storms, is also a phenomenon that scientists say is becoming more common as the planet heats up.

“Rapid intensification is just one clear sign of how climate change is making hurricane impacts worse for those in the path of storms like Delta,” said Jonathan Overpeck, a climate scientist at the University of Michigan. “More rain, more intense rain, more storm surge, more flooding, higher probability of major storms. Bad, getting worse.”