As of 10am CDT Friday, the center of Delta was located about 130 miles SSW of Cameron, Louisiana. Extrapolating out its current motion – N at 13 mph – landfall should be taking place along the SW Louisiana coast between 7-9pm CDT this evening. Sadly, Delta will be making landfall in nearly the exact same location as Hurricane Laura only 6 weeks ago, and much of this area has hardly begun the recovery from that storm.

Southwesterly shear has started to impact the storm a bit and slow weakening is likely leading up to landfall. That being said, this will still be a dangerous storm with wind and surge being the primary threats. Storm surge could be as high as 11 feet in spots.

This will be the tenth named storm to make landfall in the U.S. this season (a new record), the fourth named storm to hit Louisiana, and the first Greek alphabet-named storm on record to make landfall in the U.S. The 2020 season can’t end soon enough, but officially we still have a few more weeks to go. Hang in there!

Delta became a tropical storm on Monday morning, and has been taking full advantage of the favorable environment it’s in – strengthening through the afternoon and into the evening.

The storm is now a hurricane and further intensification is likely over the next couple of days as it moves through the western Caribbean and into the southern Gulf of Mexico. It seems pretty likely that it will become a major hurricane later Tuesday or on Wednesday.

While intensity forecasting is always tricky, track forecasting tends to be much more reliable in the 3-5 day time frame. That is the case with Delta. Models have been in very good agreement on the storm moving past the Yucatan Peninsula, and then curving north toward the northern Gulf Coast – landfall some time on Friday. Areas from Louisiana, eastward to the Florida Panhandle need to be watching this very closely.

While there’s likely to be at least some shear, and also slightly cooler water temperatures to help limit the storm somewhat in the 24 hours leading up to landfall, we’re still talking about a dangerous storm that’s going to cause some wind/surge issues where it comes ashore. We’ll keep you updated through the week.