Today Hurricane Ida made landfall in Louisiana around noon local time with winds of 150 mph, a storm surge up to 16 feet by at least one report, and torrential rains that could bring up to 20 inches of rain to the area. The winds, surge, and rain brought widespread damage to the area, with many roofs blown away, trees down, and infrastructure near the coast wiped out. We will know more tomorrow when aerial surveys can begin once the winds die down. As of 11 pm on Sunday, the entire city of New Orleans was without power, and many were concerned that the lack of power might hinder the city from pumping out all the rainwater that fell in the low-lying city. It is not clear how long they will be out of power, but for some areas it could be weeks before power is restored. I expect that there may be evacuees from Ida scattered across the Southeast in the weeks to come due to the lack of power and water and destroyed housing and businesses.
Sunday also marked the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina hitting the coast farther east than Ida. If you are interested in reading how the two storms compare, the New York Times did an excellent article that compared the two. It was written before Ida made landfall, but the forecast was so good that the comparisons are right on.
As I said, the forecasts for Ida were very consistent for a long time, from the time the first tropical depression advisory was published on Thursday at 11:00 AM (just about 3 days before it made landfall as a major hurricane!) to when it came onshore. My meteorologist husband estimated that it made landfall just about 10-15 miles east of the official track, which is amazingly good. If it had been another 10-15 miles east, the eye wall would have hit New Orleans directly, which would likely have caused even more damage. We will have to wait to see how the power outage, flooding, and the continuing storm conditions affect NOLA in the days ahead. You might recall that the worst impacts of Katrina happened after the storm passed, when the levees started to fail.
Ida is still a hurricane and is moving slowly to the north. The winds are down to 105 mph and should be dropping overnight as the storm winds down. It will wander NNE across Mississippi on Monday and then continue northeast Tuesday and Wednesday through the region. Alabama will see rain and tornadoes tomorrow east of the path of Ida, and by Monday night into Tuesday rain will start to fall in northern Georgia and up the mountains into Virginia by Wednesday. Some models bring gusts of up to 50 mph into northwest Georgia, but others keep the winds quite a bit lower.
My thoughts tonight are with all of the people that are being affected by the storm as well as the first responders and all of those who will be working after this event to pick up the pieces and make things whole again. I know it will be a tremendous job and one that may take years to accomplish.
