Hurricane Zeta, the 11th of the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season, made landfall in the US Gulf Coast, bringing with it high winds, heavy rain and a life-threatening storm surge, according to weather authorities.
In its latest update, the National Hurricane Centre (NHC) said that Zeta made landfall on Wednesday evening as a Category 2 storm with winds of 110 mph, but it weakened to Category 1 as of 9 p.m., CNN reported.
The storm was currently battering the states of Louisiana and Mississippi.
One person was killed in New Orleans after coming into contact with a downed power line, the city’s office of emergency preparedness said.
More than 700,000 customers are without power in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, according to poweroutage.us.
The NHC said that currently a hurricane warning is in effect for an area that includes nearly 5 million people, while a tropical storm warning was in place for parts of eight states: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee.
Zeta, the 27th named storm of an already historic hurricane season, first made landfall on Monday night in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula.
This year’s season has so many storms that the hurricane center has turned to the Greek alphabet after running out of official names.
Zeta is the furthest into the Greek alphabet the Atlantic season has gone.
There was also a Tropical Storm Zeta in 2005.
