By AccuWeather meteorologist & AccuWeather senior meteorologist
Published Aug. 25, 2020 10:48 AM
After Hurricane Laura makes landfall along the northwestern Gulf Coast of the United States late Wednesday night, the storm's impacts will be far-reaching and spread through portions of the Mississippi, Tennessee and Ohio valleys through the end of the week.
Some of the dangerous risks that forecasters are expecting include damaging wind gusts, flooding and, most notably, tornadoes.
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As AccuWeather Broadcast Meteorologist Geoff Cornish explained earlier this season when Isaias made landfall in the Carolinas, a city's location, relative to the track of a tropical storm or hurricane's path, determines if that city is at a higher risk for tornadoes than others.
"If you find yourself east of the track of the storm, the right front quadrant of the storm, you're going to be in that spot where there is a risk of tornadoes," Cornish said.
Isaias created a tornado outbreak from the Carolinas to mid-Atlantic earlier this month that was one of the biggest on record from a tropical system. Now, forecasters say there is a significant threat of tornadoes from Laura as the potent storm makes landfall and moves inland.
"The high risk area for tornadoes will be to the right side of the system as it moves inland from Louisiana to eastern Arkansas, western Mississippi and perhaps western Tennessee through Friday," AccuWeather Hurricane Expert Dan Kottlowski said.
As Laura tracks across the southern U.S. following landfall in Louisiana on Wednesday night, the storm will begin to lose wind intensity. However, winds could gust as high as 60 mph as far north as southeastern Missouri in lieu of any thunderstorms.
Wind this strong can knock over trees, break large tree limbs and lead to power outages.
The heaviest rainfall with Laura will tend to occur within the first 24 to 48 hours of landfall. While rain from Laura will be heavy and likely to lead to flooding, it should not be a repeat of Harvey as this storm will keep moving along. Harvey stalled over eastern Texas for days and brought several feet of rain and catastrophic flooding.
A general 4-8 inches of rain is forecast with an AccuWeather Local StormMax™ rainfall of 12 inches in western Louisiana, northeastern Texas and southwestern and central Arkansas.
Even though Laura will weaken after landfall, AccuWeather meteorologists forecast that it will remain a tropical storm well into Arkansas as it moves north. As it takes a turn to the east, it will continue weakening and eventually lose its tropical storm force by Friday. But, there is a chance it maintains some sort of circulation as a tropical depression or rainstorm through this weekend, after spending days over land.
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As the storm accelerates this weekend, rainfall amounts will be lower across Virginia, generally in the 1- to 2-inch range.
Depending on how Laura interacts with a non-tropical system in the Eastern states, there may be more general coverage of heavy, gusty thunderstorms with isolated severe weather. This is possible in portions of the Northeast and the Southeastern states.
As Laura merges with the other non-tropical feature, an area of heavy rain and locally gusty winds can occur in parts of West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, southern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, southeastern New York state and perhaps southeastern New England this weekend. The non-tropical system can bring locally heavy rainfall to parts of northern New York state and northern New England as well.
Farther north, areas of the Great Lakes and parts of the Northeast that are dealing with drought conditions will not receive any rain from Laura, although a cold front may bring some beneficial rainfall. Both the front and Laura are expected to move offshore by Sunday.
There is a chance that Laura regenerates off the mid-Atlantic coast late this weekend or early next week. The system could become a tropical storm all over again.
Keep checking back on AccuWeather.com and stay tuned to the AccuWeather Network on DirecTV, Frontier and Verizon Fios.
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