Thread for all:

We are looking down at Hurricane #Laura from the GOES-East Satellite which is about 22,300 miles above the Earth's surface in space.

Here are a couple of interesting things that I'd like to point out with #Laura:

#Laura is now beginning to wrap deeper convection around the center. Once #Laura is able to have a full band of thunderstorms around the center, the core will be insulated from dry air and can begin to intensify at a much faster rate.

Now if we look towards the east of #Laura, we can see "feathery" clouds expanding away from the core of the storm. These are upper level clouds that signify that the storm's outflow (air moving away in the upper levels of the atmosphere) is improving.

As an increasingly larger amount of warm air continues to rise in the eye-wall around the eye, some of that air that rises will begin to sink along the edges of the eye. This sinking air creates subsidence, and eventually #Laura will have an eye that is free of clouds.

#Laura is still more than a day away from making landfall as a Major Hurricane along the NW Gulf Coast. However as the system is fairly large, impacts will be felt well before landfall.

Preparations in Southeast Texas and Southwest Louisiana should be completed by tonight.