Hurricane Ida strikes Louisiana; New Orleans hunkers down

Hurricane Ida blasted ashore as probably the most highly effective storms ever to hit the US, blowing off roofs and reversing the circulate of the Mississippi River because it rushed from the Louisiana coast towards New Orleans and one of many nation’s most vital industrial corridors.
The Category 4 storm hit on the identical date Hurricane Katrina ravaged Louisiana and Mississippi 16 years earlier, coming ashore about 45 miles west of the place Category 3 Katrina first struck land. Ida’s 150-mph winds tied it for the fifth-strongest hurricane to ever hit the mainland US.
A person takes photos of excessive waves alongside the shore of Lake Pontchartrain as Hurricane Ida nears, Sunday, in New Orleans. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
The rising ocean swamped the barrier island of Grand Isle as landfall got here simply to the west at Port Fourchon. Ida made a second landfall about two hours later close to Galliano. The hurricane was churning by means of the far southern Louisiana wetlands, with the greater than 2 million folks residing in and round New Orleans and Baton Rouge underneath risk.
“This is going to be much stronger than we usually see and, quite frankly, if you had to draw up the worst possible path for a hurricane in Louisiana, it would be something very, very close to what we’re seeing,” Gov. John Bel Edwards instructed The Associated Press.

People in Louisiana woke as much as a monster storm after Ida’s prime winds grew by 45 mph in 5 hours because the hurricane moved by means of a number of the warmest ocean water on this planet within the northern Gulf of Mexico.
This satellite tv for pc picture offered by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and captured by NOAA’s GOES-16 exhibits Hurricane Ida making landfall close to Port Fourchon, La. (NOAA by way of AP)
Wind tore at awnings and water spilled out of Lake Ponchartrain in New Orleans on Sunday, and boats broke unfastened from their moorings. Engineers detected a “negative flow” on the Mississippi River on account of storm surge, US Army Corps of Engineers spokesman Ricky Boyette stated.
Edwards stated he watched a dwell video feed from round Port Fourchon as Ida got here ashore.

“The storm surge is just tremendous. We can see the roofs have been blown off of the port buildings in many places,” Edwards instructed the AP.
Officials stated Ida’s swift intensification from a couple of thunderstorms to an enormous hurricane in simply three days left no time to organise a compulsory evacuation of New Orleans’ 390,000 residents. Mayor LaToya Cantrell urged residents remaining within the metropolis on Sunday to ?hunker down.”