FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. _ Hurricane Delta made landfall near Creole, Louisiana., as a Category 2 storm about 7 p.m. Friday, the National Hurricane Center said.
Delta's eye started coming ashore in southwestern Louisiana about 6 p.m. Eastern time, with 100-mph winds and life-threatening storm surge as it moved inland.
Category 2 hurricanes on the Saffir-Simpson scale have wind speeds between 96 and 110 mph. Category 3 hurricanes have wind speeds between 111 and 129 mph.
At Freshwater Canal Locks in Louisiana, a water level gauge reported storm surge inundation of more than 7 feet above ground level, the hurricane center said.
Lake Charles, a few miles west of the scheduled landfall, was getting heavy rain and 60 mph wind gusts late Friday afternoon. Port Arthur, Texas, even farther west of the landfall site, reported 5 inches of rain and wind gusts of 63 mph.
Power outages in Louisiana and neighboring Texas soared past 203,000 homes and businesses Friday shortly after the storm came ashore, according to the tracking website PowerOutage.us.
Delta remains a relatively fast-moving storm. The NHC said Delta is "expected to weaken to a tropical storm tonight and to a tropical depression by Saturday afternoon or evening."
Regardless, heavy rain and a storm surge up to 11 feet are expected along portions of the northern Gulf Coast.
"The combination of a dangerous storm surge and the tide will cause normally dry areas near the coast to be flooded by rising waters moving inland from the shoreline," the hurricane center said Friday morning.
As of 9 p.m., Delta _ the earliest 25th-named storm ever to form _ was located 15 miles west of Jennings, Louisiana, traveling north-northeast at 14 mph. Maximum sustained winds dropped to 90 mph as the storm moved over land.
Delta's hurricane-force winds extend outward from its core up to 40 miles and its tropical-storm-force winds extend 160 miles.
Delta's threatening size is causing a large risk of life-threatening storm surge along the Gulf Coast where the tide will cause normally dry areas to be flooded by rising waters moving inland as high as 7 to 11 feet from the Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge to Morgan City, Louisiana.
Although the most intense thunderstorms in Delta are still west of the eye the biggest threat of tornadoes remains in the right front quadrant of the storm.
"The reason for that," said John Cangialosi, hurricane specialist at the National Weather Service Office in Miami, "is that winds are typically stronger on that side because it is moving in the same direction of the motion and the wind is typically coming onshore, assuming the system is making landfall, which can drag storm surge and bring the stronger winds inland."
The hurricane center said if the peak storm surge occurs at high tide, the area in Louisiana from the Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge to Port Fourchon, including Vermilion Bay, could see seven to 11 feet of water.
Delta has been, or will be, a noteworthy storm on a few levels. Among the notable marks:
_ First hurricane named after a letter in the Greek alphabet to make landfall in the continental U.S.;
_ Second storm named after a letter in the Greek alphabet to make landfall in the continental U.S. after Tropical Storm Beta, which made landfall near Port O'Connor, Texas, on Sept. 21;
_ Strongest storm ever named after a letter in the Greek alphabet, eclipsing Hurricane Beta (2005), which reached 115 mph;
_ Fastest storm to intensify from tropical depression to Category 4 storm in modern records. Delta beat Hurricane Keith (2000) by six hours for most rapid intensification;
_ The 10th named storm to make landfall in the continental U.S., beating the record nine established in 1916;
_ Fourth named storm to make landfall in Louisiana this year, joining Tropical Storms Cristobal and Marco and Hurricane Laura. That ties a mark established in 2002 among Tropical Storms Bertha, Hanna, Isidore and Hurricane Lilli. More than 6,600 Laura evacuees remain in hotels around the state, mainly in New Orleans, because their homes are too heavily damaged to return;
_ Earliest 25th named storm ever to form. The previous mark was established by Tropical Storm Gamma, which formed in the Caribbean Sea on Nov. 15, 2005;
_ Third major hurricane of the 2020 season, joining Laura and Teddy, which both were Category 4;
_ Second-strongest hurricane in the Atlantic basin this year at 145 mph, just 5 mph behind Laura.
The busy 2020 hurricane season, which has had 25 named storms, is rivaling the 2005 season, which had a record 27 named storms.
Remarkably, none of the nine storms that have made landfall in the continental U.S. this year have hit Florida. October storms often threaten Florida as they move north and then northeastward.
The Gulf Coast hasn't been nearly as fortunate.
The region was hit twice in September. Hurricane Sally made landfall on Sept. 16 near Gulf Shores, Alabama, five days before Tropical Storm Beta.
Two storms hit the Gulf Coast in August in a 72-hour stretch when Hurricane Laura and Tropical Storm Marco came ashore.
