Hurricane Laura is one of the most powerful storms ever to hit the US Gulf Coast, but its path avoided major cities such as Houston and New Orleans, causing less damage — to people and their towns — than initially feared.

A peach recall has expanded to include loose peaches and peach products after 78 people were sickened in 12 states by salmonella poisoning linked to the fruit, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday.

Hurricane Laura made landfall in Louisiana near the Texas border early Thursday as a Category 4 storm with maximum sustained winds of 150 mph.

As Hurricane Laura bears down on the Gulf Coast, residents are preparing for what could be a historic storm surge.

Hurricane Laura was expected to rapidly strengthen to a Category 4 hurricane on Wednesday on a steady track to hit the Texas-Louisiana Gulf Coast after dark, causing catastrophic damage, the National Hurricane Center said.

Residents in Galveston and Port Arthur, Texas, were ordered to evacuate as Hurricane Laura strengthens in the Gulf of Mexico. The storm is forecast to make landfall Wednesday night as a major Category 3 hurricane with winds of up to 115 mph in eastern Texas.

In a major expansion of an already sprawling FBI investigation, a federal grand jury Friday indicted 11 more people on a variety of fraud and conspiracy charges, accusing them of participating in staged accidents with 18-wheelers then filing bogus lawsuits to defraud trucking and insurance companies.

Heavy rains from Tropical Storm Marco soaked portions of the Gulf Coast on Monday, one of two systems threatening a historic one-two punch in the region.

Think the risk of your home filling up with floodwater, magnified these days by climate change, is only an issue near the coasts and rivers? New research detailing nearly every corner of the U.S. shows otherwise.

Catastrophe modeling firm Karen Clark & Company (KCC) estimates that insured losses from Tropical Storm Cristobal will reach nearly $150 million. KCC’s estimate, which was based on its high-resolution US Hurricane Reference Model, includes privately insured wind and storm surge damage to residential, commercial, and industrial properties and vehicles.

Tropical Storm Cristobal downgraded to a tropical depression Monday morning as it continued to spiral north into Louisiana after a weekend that plagued Florida with tornado warnings including an EF1 tornado that damaged homes in Orlando.

The central coast of Louisiana remains the consensus target of Cristobal, which forecasters expect to regain tropical storm strength as it moves north over the Gulf of Mexico to make landfall late Sunday or early Monday after it completes a disruptive spin across the Mexico coast of the Bay of Campeche on Friday.

Forecasters at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are predicting an above-normal 2020 Atlantic hurricane season.

The Senate voted 29-8 Monday to pass a bill that could lower auto insurance rates by limiting damage suits by people injured in car wrecks. The bill by Sen. Kirk Talbot, R-River Ridge, would change aspects of Louisiana’s tort laws that Republican lawmakers and business lobbyists say make it too easy to file lawsuits after car accidents.

At least one person was killed and several were injured after a possible tornado was reported Sunday night in Louisiana, according to officials. The National Weather Service (NWS) office in Lake Charles had issued a tornado warning until 9:15 p.m. CDT for Acadia Parish for a radar-indicated tornado in the area.