Important Update on Laura as Hurricane Watches Have Been Issued

Tomorrow morning I will have an update on Long Island Weather. As for Marco, it's down to 40 mph maximum sustained winds as it weakened rapidly on approach to the coast, which is what I had been mentioning. Laura, however, will be quite a different story!

Tropical Storm Laura currently has maximum sustained winds of 60 mph, but it's projected to intensify to Category 2 status with maximum sustained winds of 105 mph. However, it is very realistic that it becomes a Category 3 hurricane. Also, there is still uncertainty in the exact area of landfall, and it's possible it goes a little farther west and makes landfall along the upper Texas coast.

The following is from the National Hurricane Center:

- Once Laura moves over the southeastern Gulf of Mexico tonight, a combination of warm sea surface temperatures and low vertical wind shear should allow for steady strengthening. The latest iterations of the global and regional hurricane models continue to show significant deepening while Laura traverses the Gulf of Mexico, and a period or rapid strengthening is possible once an inner core is able to organize.

- The latest runs of the dynamical models are in a little better agreement, but the 1200 UTC ECMWF ensemble mean is located considerably left of its deterministic run, indicating that uncertainty regarding the track forecast remains. Users are again reminded to not to focus on the exact details of the track or intensity forecasts as the average NHC track error at 60 h is around 90 miles and the average intensity error is close to 15 mph.

- See all of the images below for more information.