Gulf Coast braces for fast-approaching Hurricane Nate
Hurricane Nate raced swiftly over the central Gulf of Mexico on Saturday, gaining added strength as forecasters said it would smash into the U.S. Gulf Coast in coming nighttime hours.
Louisiana’s governor urged his state’s residents to take Nate seriously even before New Orleans and much of his state’s fragile coast was placed under a hurricane warning, saying the storm “has the potential to do a lot of damage.”
“No one should take this storm lightly. It has already claimed the lives of at least 20 people,” Gov. John Bel Edwards said Friday. “We do want people to be very, very cautious and to not take this storm for granted.”
The National Hurricane Center in Miami said the core of the Category 1 hurricane was located at 7 a.m. CDT Saturday about 245 miles (395 kilometers) south-southeast of the mouth of the Mississippi River. A hurricane hunter plane found the storm had gained new muscle in recent hours, with top sustained winds rising to at 85 mph (135 kph) amid a threat of some additional strengthening.
A hurricane warning is in effect from Grand Isle, Louisiana, to the Alabama-Florida border and also for metropolitan New Orleans and nearby Lake Pontchartrain. A tropical storm warning extends west of Grand Isle to Morgan City, Louisiana, and around Lake Maurepas and east of the Alabama-Florida border to the Okaloosa-Walton County line in
