The Big Easy Is In Big Trouble

Katrina has become one mean hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico, a rare category 5 as of this writing, and it's taking aim at New Orleans. Given that most of the city sits below sea level and Katrina could generate a huge storm surge, they may have to rent boats to tour the French Quarter for quite awhile.

Hurricane Katrina strengthened to a dangerous Category 5 on Sunday with 160 mph sustained wind as residents of south Louisiana jammed freeways in a rush to get out of the way of the powerful storm.

The National Hurricane Center put out a special advisory on the hurricane's gain in strength just before 8 a.m. EDT. The boost came just hours after Katrina reached Category 4, with wind of 145 mph, as it gathered energy from the warm water of the Gulf of Mexico.
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By Saturday evening, Mayor C. Ray Nagin was visiting New Orleans television stations and urging people to leave.

"I've been here 33 years, and we've always been concerned about New Orleans," said National Hurricane Center director Max Mayfield. "I had to let the mayor know that this storm has the potential not only to cause large property damage, but large loss of life if people don't make the right decision."

Mayfield said Katrina could be a disaster for New Orleans because the bowl-like city sits below sea-level and is dependent on levees and pumps to keep the water out.

"You could very well be looking at a storm surge of 15 to 20 feet, possible 25 feet," he said. "If that water breaches the levees it will take forever to drain it back out.

Having had a front row seat for a category 3 storm back in 1970 (in Corpus Christi, TX), I can't image how much worse a category 5 could be, especially in a low-lying city like New Orleans. This is going to be big, especially if the center passes just to the west of the city.

UPDATE: Right after I posted this the Weather Channel updated the sustained winds to 175 MPH - WOW! This thing will do Biblical damage to whatever it ends up hitting if it stays anywhere near this level. Someone pointed out that if the storm retains this intensity, it would almost be like a 30 mile wide F-3 tornado near the center, capable of wiping whole cities off the map.

By the way, as a political side-note, count on this thing being blamed on global warming. It won't take long for those stories to come out.