Hurricane Ida roars towards Louisiana

Bloomberg

Hurricane Ida gained power rapidly on Sunday as it crossed the Gulf of Mexico on its way to smashing into Louisiana, threatening to unleash mass flooding and destruction in New Orleans.
The Category 4 hurricane has top winds of 150 miles (241 kilometres) per hour, the National Hurricane Center said at 7 am local time. Only two other storms on record have made landfall in Louisiana with winds that powerful.
“I feel sick to my stomach watching,” Eric Blake, a forecaster at the National Hurricane Center said on Twitter. “This is a very sobering morning.” Ida is barreling into New Orleans on the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, one of the most devastating natural disasters in US history. When it hit on Sunday, the storm will be the biggest test yet of the region’s levees and infrastructure rebuilt after Katrina.
Ida, poised to come ashore just southwest of New Orleans, is expected to drive up ocean levels as much as 16 feet (4.9 meters) and dump 2 feet of rain. Winds will be strong enough to rip roofs from houses and snap trees and power poles.

Blackouts could last weeks.
Forecasters expect the storm to grow even stronger as it approaches. It’s currently set to bring the most powerful winds to Louisiana on records going back to 1851, and its central pressure rivals Katrina, according to Phil Klotzbach a hurricane researcher at Colorado State University.
If Ida’s winds gain just a little more power, it could become a Category 5 storm, said Todd Crawford, director of meteorology at commercial forecaster Atmospheric G2. Only four Category 5 storms have hit the contiguous U.S.
In addition to Ida, the hurricane center is tracking four more potential storms in the Atlantic and Hurricane Nora, which is raking Mexico’s Pacific coast.
New Orleans asked residents to evacuate or take shelter. The levee gates are closed in many areas and hospital wards were cleared out. Most oil production in the Gulf of Mexico is shut down. Thousands of people have fled the region.
The storm could damage close to 1 million homes along the coast, according to CoreLogic. It’s forecast to run directly over chemical plants, refineries and the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port. All told, damages and losses could exceed $40 billion, said Chuck Watson, a disaster modeler at Enki Research.
“It could be catastrophic,” said Jim Rouiller, lead meteorologist at the Energy Weather Group.
As of Sunday, 537 flights had been canceled in New Orleans, Dallas, and Houston through Monday, according to FlightAware, an airline tracking service. Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport was thronged with local residents lining up for outbound flights or trying to rent vehicles to flee the city. Queues at rental car kiosks were hours long.
President Joe Biden declared a state of emergency for Louisiana. New Orleans is below sea level and depends on levees and pumps to keep the ocean and river out. The Mississippi River in downtown New Orleans has already risen about 2 feet from Saturday and is forecast to rise 4 feet higher later Sunday, the National Weather Service said.