ORLANDO, Fla. – Hurricane Ida struck Cuba on Friday and threatened to slam into Louisiana with devastating force over the weekend, prompting evacuations in New Orleans and across the coastal region.
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Ida intensified rapidly Friday from a tropical storm to a hurricane with top winds of 80 mph (128 kph) as it crossed western Cuba. The National Hurricane Center predicted it would strengthen into an extremely dangerous Category 4 hurricane, with top winds of 140 mph (225 kph) before making landfall along the U.S. Gulf Coast late Sunday.
“This will be a life-altering storm for those who aren’t prepared,” National Weather Service meteorologist Benjamin Schott said during a Friday news conference with Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards.
Here is the 11 p.m. advisory and forecast track from the National Hurricane Center. pic.twitter.com/kCHLfqEQAF
— Tom Sorrells (@tomsorrells) August 28, 2021
The governor urged residents to quickly prepare, saying: “By nightfall tomorrow night, you need to be where you intend to be to ride out the storm.”
In New Orleans, Mayor LaToya Cantrell called for voluntary evacuations. With the storm intensifying so much over a short period of time, she said it wasn’t possible to order a mandatory evacuation which generally calls for using both lanes of highway traffic to evacuate people from the city.
“The city cannot order a mandatory evacuation because we don’t have the time.” Mayor LaToya Cantrell said.
City officials said residents need to be prepared for prolonged power outages, and asked elderly residents to consider evacuating. Collin Arnold, the city’s emergency management director, said the city could be under high winds for about ten hours. Earlier Friday, Cantrell called for a mandatory evacuation for residents outside the city’s levee protections — a relatively small sliver of the city’s population.
Other areas across the coastal region were under a mix of voluntary and mandatory evacuations. The storm is expected to make landfall on the exact date Hurricane Katrina devastated a large swath of the Gulf Coast exactly 16 years earlier. Capt. Ross Eichorn, a fishing guide on the coast about 70 miles (112 kilometers) southwest of New Orleans, said he fears warm Gulf waters will “make a monster” out of Ida.
“With a direct hit, ain’t no telling what’s going to be left — if anything,” Eichorn said. He added: “Anybody that isn’t concerned has got something wrong with them.”
A hurricane warning was issued for most of the Louisiana coast from Intracoastal City to the mouth of the Pearl River. A tropical storm warning was extended to the Mississippi-Alabama line.
Officials decided against evacuating New Orleans hospitals. There’s little room for their patients elsewhere, with hospitals from Texas to Florida already reeling from a spike in coronavirus patients, said Dr. Jennifer Avengo, the city’s health director.
At the state’s largest hospital system, Ochsner Health System, officials ordered 10 days worth of fuel, food, drugs and other supplies and have backup fuel contracts for its generators. One positive was that the number of COVID-19 patients had dropped from 988 to 836 over the past week — a 15% decline.
President Joe Biden approved a federal emergency declaration for Louisiana ahead of the storm. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said FEMA plans to send nearly 150 medical personnel and almost 50 ambulances to the Gulf Coast to assist strained hospitals.
Ida made its first landfall Friday afternoon on Cuba’s southern Isle of Youth. The Cuban government issued a hurricane warning for its westernmost provinces, where forecasters said as much as 20 inches (50 centimeters) of rain could fall in places, possibly unleashing deadly flash floods and mudslides.
An even greater danger will then begin over the Gulf, where forecasts were aligned in predicting Ida will strengthen very quickly into a major hurricane before landfall in the Mississippi River delta late Sunday, the hurricane center said.
If that forecast holds true, Ida would hit 16 years to the day that Hurricane Katrina made landfall as a Category 3 storm with 125 mph (201 kph) winds near the riverside community of Buras, just down the Mississippi River from New Orleans.
Katrina is blamed for an estimated 1,800 deaths from the central Louisiana coast to around the Mississippi-Alabama state line. A massive storm surge scoured the shores and wiped houses off the map. In New Orleans, failures of federal levees led to catastrophic flooding. Water covered 80% of the city and many homes were swamped to the rooftops. Some victims drowned in their attics. The Superdome and New Orleans Convention Center became scenes of sweltering misery as tens of thousands were stranded without power or running water.
Memories of Katrina still haunt many who scrambled to prepare for Ida on Friday, lining up for groceries, gas and ice, as well as sandbags that the city was offering.
Traffic snarled at entrances to a New Orleans Costco, where dozens of cars were backed up at the gas pumps and shoppers wheeled out carts stacked with cases of bottled water and other essentials.
Retired police officer Wondell Smith, who worked on the police force when Katrina hit, said he and his family were planning to stay, but were also getting ready to head farther inland if the forecasts worsened. He loaded water, bread and sandwich meat into his SUV.
“I know what that looks like,” Smith said, referring to the potential devastation. “This is my first time being home in 34 years of service,” he added. “And I want to be prepared.”
Saturday’s preseason NFL game between the Arizona Cardinals and the Saints at the Superdome was first moved up seven hours to avoid the weather, and then canceled altogether.
The hurricane center predicted the peak storm surge could reach 10 feet to 15 feet (3 to 4.5 meters) along the Louisiana coast, with a possible surge of 7 to 11 feet (2.1 to 3.4 meters) in the New Orleans area. The storm’s track put New Orleans on the eastern side — often called the dirty side — which generally sees much more significant effects than the western side.
“Being east of this storm’s track is not ideal,” said Arnold.
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Meanwhile, an elongated area of low pressure located over the central Atlantic, several hundred miles east of Bermuda, is producing disorganized showers and thunderstorms.
Environmental conditions are forecast to be marginally conducive for development, but a tropical depression could still form over the weekend.
The system is expected to move slowly east during the next day or two, but a faster northeast motion is forecast to begin on Sunday.
It has a 60% chance of tropical development over the next five days.
And a tropical wave located about midway between the Cabo Verde Islands and the Lesser Antilles continues to produce a large area of disorganized showers and thunderstorms that have become a little better organized, according to the National Hurricane Center.
Additional development of this system is expected, and a tropical depression is likely to form Friday night or Saturday before it moves into an environment of stronger upper-level winds and slightly cooler waters.
The disturbance is forecast to move west-northwest through Friday night then turn north over the weekend.
It has an 80% chance of forming over the next five days.
Another tropical wave is expected to emerge off of the west African coast by the middle of next week, according to the NHC. Afterwards, environmental conditions appear marginally conducive for gradual development toward the end of next week as the system moves west-northwestward to northwestward at 10 to 15 mph.
None of the systems is expected to have a direct impact on Central Florida.
The next named storms will be Julian and Kate.
The peak of hurricane season is Sept. 10.
Hurricane season runs through November.
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