'Hurricane Ida Is Here' New Orleans Officials Say

“Hurricane Ida is here.” Collin Arnold, Director of the New Orleans Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness said on Sunday, just before the storm made landfall with winds stronger than Katrina.

Hurricane Ida barreled into the Louisiana coast on Sunday, packing winds more powerful than Hurricane Katrina and a devastating storm surge that threatens to inundate New Orleans with mass flooding, power outages and destruction.

The Category 4 storm roared ashore at 11:55 a.m. local time near Port Fourchon, Louisiana, with top winds of 150 miles (240 kilometers) per hour, the National Hurricane Center said. It comes on the 16th anniversary of Katrina’s landfall, which left the region in ruins and killed more than 1,800 people.

Ida, so sprawling that its tropical-force winds extend 140 miles, will be a bruising test for the region’s levees and infrastructure rebuilt after Katrina. It arrives on the heels of a United Nations scientific report warning that weather will only grow more extreme as global warming intensifies. Six tropical cyclones have now struck the U.S. this year. Floods killed 20 people this month in Tennessee. And drought- and heat-wave-fueled wildfires are raging in California, Minnesota, Greece and Turkey.

Ida hits Louisiana at a particularly vulnerable moment. The state’s hospitals are already overwhelmed with more than 2,600 coronavirus patients. Just 41% of the population is fully vaccinated.

“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, which came ashore about 60 miles south 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. About 80,000 homes and businesses were without power at 11:20 a.m. local time, according to Poweroutage.us, which tracks utility outages.

In addition to Ida, the hurricane center is tracking Tropical Storm Julian in the central Atlantic, as well as three other potential storms there. Meanwhile, Hurricane Nora is raking Mexico’s Pacific coast.