Hurricane Isaac raked the Louisiana coast and headed for a shuttered New Orleans late Tuesday, with brutal timing that made up for much of what it lacked in punch.
Just hours shy of the seventh anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Isaac’s approach left deserted streets from New Orleans’ famous French Quarter to Tampa 480 miles away, where Republican conventioneers pressed on with only a passing mention of the storm’s arrival.
A Category 1 hurricane with winds at 80 mph, Isaac came ashore at 6:45 p.m. CDT near the mouth of the Mississippi River in southeastern Louisiana, drenching a sparsely populated neck of land that stretches into the Gulf of Mexico. But the worst was still to come as the slow-moving storm chugged along on a track that would take it just west of New Orleans, roughly 70 miles to the north.
At 3 a.m. EDT Wednesday, the hurricane that once was crawling at a forward speed of 7 mph was nearly stationary near the southeast Louisiana coast, according to an advisory from the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami. Isaac was forecast to over the next day or two to drift over that coast before heading inland, the center added.
While much less powerful than Katrina in 2005, Isaac unleashed fierce winds and soaking rains that knocked out power to more than 200,000 homes and businesses.
The storm drew intense scrutiny because of its timing — just before the anniversary of the hurricane that devastated that city, while the first major speeches of the Republican National Convention went on in Tampa, Fla., already delayed and tempered by the storm.
While many residents stayed put, evacuations were ordered in low-lying areas of Louisiana and Mississippi, where officials closed 12 shorefront casinos.
One of the main concerns along the shoreline was storm surge, which occurs when hurricane winds raise sea levels off the coast, causing flooding on land.
A storm surge of 11 feet was reported at Shell Beach, Louisiana, late Tuesday while a surge of 6.9 feet was reported in Waveland, Mississippi, the Hurricane Center said.
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article courtesy of Newsnet5.com
