CNN News:飓风劳拉逼近美国 或将带来毁灭性破坏

Our first story takes us to the border between Texas and Louisiana because that's where Hurricane Laura was expected to make landfall on Wednesday night. Yesterday afternoon Laura was a strong Category 3 hurricane as it spun through the Gulf.
Its sustained wind speeds were 125 miles per hour. But then it got more intense reaching Category 4 status as it approached the U.S. Gulf Coast. A Category 4 hurricane carries wind speeds of at least 130 miles per hour. This makes it capable of causing severe damage to well-built homes, uprooting most of the trees where it makes landfall and flinging them across roadways, and that could knock out electricity for weeks or longer.
Hurricane Laura was the second storm system to strike the region this week. Tropical Storm Marco made landfall on Monday near the mouth of the Mississippi River but it had weakened enough beforehand that its main threat was heavy rain. This could be worsened considerably by Hurricane Laura.

It was expected to bring more rain to areas Marco had already soaked. Factor that in with Laura's destructive winds and very dangerous storm surge, a rise in seawater levels blown ashore by an approaching hurricane, and the damage could be catastrophic. Forecasters expect that Laura could cause sea levels to rise 10 to 15 feet higher along the coasts of southeastern Texas and southwestern Louisiana. The National Hurricane Center said tornadoes were also possible in the region.
Mandatory evacuations went into effect some places. This doesn't mean that people were forced to leave their homes. It means that if they chose to stay, despite the order, rescue services wouldn't be available to them if they needed help.
The U.S. Gulf Coast isn't the only place to be impacted by Laura. It hit the Caribbean while it was still a tropical storm. Several deaths in the Dominican Republic and Haiti were blamed on this system.