Delta Weakens to Tropical Storm Status – Clean Up Begins
Hurricane Delta rolled across the coast of Cameron Parish late Friday afternoon just about 12 miles away from where Hurricane Laura crossed the coast about a month and a half earlier. While Delta was certainly no Laura, the storm has caused plenty of damage or redamaged a lot of newly repaired places.
The National Hurricane Center's 0400 am CDT Advisory puts the center of now Tropical Storm Delta about 70 miles south of Monroe. The system's maximum sustained winds are now listed at 45 mph. Which is quite a drop from the 115 mph we were seeing in this system just 24 hours ago.
The storm continues to move at a fairly rapid clip, about 16 mph and at that pace, the center of circulation should exit Louisiana shortly after sunrise. In its, wake Delta has left a lot of downed tree limbs, damage to buildings and other structures, and thousands without power.
As of 0400 am CDT hundreds of thousands of Louisiana residents were without power. CLECO was reporting that over 117,000 of its customers were without service. While Entergy is reporting that almost 300,000 of their customers were without power.
SLEMCO is reporting that they too had tens of thousands of their customers without service this morning. Many other service providers such as LUS, Beauregard Electric Co-OP, and Jeff Davis Electric Co-op are reporting outages as well.
Forecasters say that Delta should become a remnant low-pressure system over the weekend and then be pushed off the Eastern Seaboard by the first of next week. If there is some good news for those of us who will be working to repair damaged property, there is a cold front coming early next week. That should at least make having to be outside a little more tolerable.
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