page_title: Hurricane Laura
section_title: United States
hierarchical_section_title: Hurricane Laura / Preparations / United States
caption_attribution_description: English: Forecast track for then Tropical Storm Laura at 5 p.m. AST on August 22, 2020
context_page_description: Hurricane Laura was a deadly and damaging Category 4 Atlantic hurricane that tied the 1856 Last Island hurricane as the strongest hurricane ever recorded to make landfall in the U.S state of Louisiana, as measured by maximum sustained winds. The twelfth named storm, fourth hurricane, and first major hurricane of the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season, Laura originated from a large tropical wave that moved off the West African coast on August 16 and became a tropical depression on August 20. It intensified into a tropical storm a day later, becoming the earliest twelfth named storm on record in the North Atlantic basin, forming eight days earlier than 1995's Hurricane Luis.
  Laura first hit the Lesser Antilles and brushed Puerto Rico as a tropical storm, before it moved across the island of Hispaniola. The storm killed 31 people in Haiti and four in the Dominican Republic. The storm later moved across the length of Cuba, prompting tropical storm warnings and the evacuation of more than 260,000 people there. Subsequently, the outer rainbands extended into the Florida Keys and South Florida.
context_section_description: Hurricanes Marco and Laura threatened a large swath of oil rigs positioned across the Gulf of Mexico. By August 23, approximately 58 percent of oil production and 45 percent of natural gas production was shut down; this included the evacuation of 114 platforms. By August 25, 299 of 643 platforms and 27 of 28 mobile rigs were evacuated. Seven tornado watches were issued for this storm. They included the Coastal Waters as well as Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, Alabama, and Kentucky. The staff at the NWS Lake Charles office also evacuated with warnings for their area being issued by NWS Brownsville. Three rare Extreme Wind Warnings were issued for Louisiana and Texas as Laura approached landfall.
caption: Forecast tracks and accompanying hurricane and tropical storm watches and warnings 21:00 UTC on August 22 for Marco (left) and Laura (right). At the time, both cyclones were forecast to make landfall in Louisiana as hurricanes: Marco on August 24 and Laura on August 26.
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