Hurricane Ida is looking eerily like a dangerous and perhaps scarier sequel to 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, the costliest storm in American history. But there’s a few still-to-come twists that could make Ida nastier in some ways, but not quite as horrific in others. “The main story with Katrina was storm surge damage, and over a vast area. The main story with Ida will be a combination of wind, storm surge, and fresh water flooding damage,” said meteorologist Jeff Masters, who flew hurricane missions for the government and founded Weather Underground. Ida made landfall on the same calendar date, Aug. 29, as Katrina did 16 years ago, striking the same general part of Louisiana with about the same wind speed, after rapidly strengthening by going over a similar patch of deep warm water that supercharges hurricanes. What could be different is crucial though: direction, size and strength. “Ida will most definitely be stronger than Katrina, and by a pretty big margin,” said University of Miami hurricane researcher Brian McNoldy. “And, the worst of the storm will pass over New Orleans and Baton Rouge, which got the weaker side of Katrina.” Ida was a strong Category 4 storm with 150 mph (241 kph) winds when it made landfall, “a sneeze away from becoming the fifth Category 5 landfall on the continental U.S.,” McNoldy said. Katrina weakened quite a bit before landfall, striking Louisiana as a Category 3 storm with 127 mph (204 kph) winds. Katrina hit Louisiana from due south, while Ida is coming to the same part of the state from southeast. On Sunday, Ida’s hurricane-force winds extended 37 miles (about 60 kilometers) from the center, compared to Katrina’s hurricane-force winds that spread 98 miles (158 kilometers) from the center when it made landfall, McNoldy said. “This has the potential to be more of a natural disaster whereas the big issue in Katrina was more of a man-made one” because of levee failures, said McNoldy. Levee failures pushed Katrina’s death toll to 1,833 and its overall damage to about $176 billion in current dollars, and experts don’t expect Ida to come near those totals. DIFFERENT DIRECTION Ida came to the same general place from a slightly different direction. Several hurricane experts fear that difference in angle may put New Orleans more in the dangerous storm quadrant — the right front part of a hurricane — than it was in Katrina, when the city was more devastated by levee failure than storm surge. Katrina’s northeast quadrant pushed 28-foot (8.5-meter) storm surges in Mississippi not New Orleans. Ida’s “angle is potentially even worse,” McNoldy said. Because it is smaller “it’s not going to as easily create a huge storm surge … but the angle that this is coming in, I think is more conducive to pushing water into the lake (Pontchartrain).” That northwestern path of Ida not only puts New Orleans more in the bullseye than it did in Katrina, but it also more targets Baton Rouge and crucial industrial areas, Masters said. He said Ida is forecast to move through “the just absolute worst place for a hurricane.” “It is forecast to track over the industrial corridor between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, which is one of the key infrastructure regions of the U.S., critical to the economy,” Masters said. “You’re probably […]

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