Tanzina Vega: I'm Tanzina Vega and you're listening to The Takeaway. Hurricane Laura has hit the Gulf Coast. The Hurricane made landfall last night in Louisiana and Texas, raising concerns for residents who remember the devastating effects of major storms like Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Harvey. So far more than 500,000 people have been ordered to evacuate the region but evacuations and setting up shelters have only been complicated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Chelsey Harvey is a climate science reporter for E&E news. Chelsea, thanks for being with us.

Chelsey Harvey: Thanks for having me.

Tanzina: Hurricane Laura started in the Gulf Coast off of the Caribbean, and it suddenly became this massive storm. Why has it gained so much strength in these past few days?

Chelsey: Hurricane Laura underwent a process known as rapid intensification, which is when a hurricane dramatically strengthens over a 24-hour period. On Tuesday morning, Laura was a Category 1 by Wednesday afternoon, it was already a Category 4, which was really a remarkable transformation. There are a variety of factors that need to come together to make that process possible. Warm waters tend to make it more favorable for a hurricane to spin up faster. There need to be certain favorable wind conditions and everything came together in the Gulf waters that allowed this really rapid intensification of the hurricane over the course of just one day.

Tanzina: Chelsea, before the storm hit land, the National Weather Service had warned of an unsurvivable storm surge, that felt-- and again, this is a word that we use very often these days, unprecedented. What does that mean and how has that played out so far?

Chelsey: It's interesting with hurricanes because we rank them by category in terms of their wind speed. I think a lot of people think that hurricane winds are the most dangerous part of the storm and that's true. Winds do cause a lot of damage, but really, the biggest thing to watch out for is how those winds affect the waters at the coast. Unsurvivable storm surge, we're already seeing this as the storm has hit the coast. The storm slams into the coast. It drives all of this ocean water very quickly onto the shore.

As of the time that Hurricane Laura hit the Gulf Coast, the National Hurricane Center was projecting that the storm could actually drive ocean water as far as 30 miles inland, which is really remarkable. That really just has to do with the size and the strength of the storm and the intensity with which it's able to push all that ocean water over the land.

Tanzina: Chelsea, how does this storm as it's hitting Louisiana and Texas, how does the storm compared to hurricanes like Katrina and Harvey?

Chelsey: This storm is one of the biggest and the most intense storms to hit this part of the Gulf Coast in at least a decade. As far as its behavior, we're going to have to just see how it plays out over the next day or so. Both Harvey and Katrina cause the majority of the damage that they wreaked on the Gulf Coast because of the flooding that they sparked, although that happened in different ways with both storms.

With Katrina with the failure of the levees and this huge storm surge that washed over the area. With Harvey, it was little bit different. That flooding was mainly caused by just massive amounts of rainfall that that storm produced. Harvey was also interesting because it hovered in place over the Texas coast for a long time and it dumped all this rainfall and caused all of this river flooding on top of the storm surge.

With Laura, we're going to have to see how quickly it moves over the coastline, how much rain it dumps while it's there, and also the effect of the storm surge. We'll just have to see how it plays out over the next day to see how similar its behavior is to some of the recent storms that we've seen in the past.

Tanzina: Chelsea, before the pandemic, there was so much talk about climate change, and that has not changed in terms of how our climate is being affected despite the pandemic. I'm wondering, does the intensity of the storm, the fact that there were actually two storms, there was Hurricane Laura and then Tropical Storm Marco that were neck and neck. Does that have anything to do with the changing climate and the warming of the planet?

Chelsea: Yes, that's a great question. This rapid intensification that Laura underwent is really interesting and that's a process that scientists believe will probably happen more frequently in the future as the climate continues to warm. That has a lot to do with warming ocean temperatures being more favorable for rapid spin-up of these hurricanes and they turn into major hurricanes a lot faster. Models project that that rapid intensification process may happen more often as the climate changes.

Just in general, Laura hit the coast as a Category 4 storm, it's a major hurricane, and models do project that, in general, hurricanes will be stronger in the future and that a greater proportion of the hurricanes that do form are likely to be major storms of a Category 3 or higher. I think the thing to really pay attention to in the future is how strong are the hurricanes that do form and how many of them are going to be major hurricanes by the time they hit the coast.

Tanzina: There's also the-- We need to talk about the fact that we are also in a pandemic that folks are trying to evacuate, people have been ordered to evacuate the region. Nearly 500,000 people are trying to find places to go but of course, this is complicated by the fact that we are trying to maintain social distancing and mask-wearing and not spread the Coronavirus. How is that adding to the complications of evacuations right now?

Chelsea: Absolutely. It really is complicating the evacuation process. In the case of a storm like this, it's absolutely imperative that people along the Gulf Coast evacuate. But, it's difficult because then people are faced with this choice where they might be exposed to the virus if they go to a shelter where they're staying with a lot of other people or if they get on an evacuation bus with large groups of other evacuees. There are measures that have been taken to try to mitigate those risks. Requiring masks in shelters and on the buses and doing temperature checks before allowing people on the buses, but of course, there's always going to be some risk and so it does make it a difficult choice for people who are trying to maintain social distancing but also want to protect their families and do the right thing and get out.

Tanzina: Chelsea Harvey is the climate science reported for E&E News. Chelsea, thanks so much.

Chelsea: Thank you.

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