Scenes from Ida: Record major hurricane spews devastation across Louisiana
The anguish resonated clearly across the northern Gulf Coast as Hurricane Ida swirled toward the southeast Louisiana shoreline.
Even seasoned meteorologists at the National Weather Service in New Orleans shuddered at the destruction that was about to befall Louisiana and neighboring Coastal Mississippi, where monster Hurricane Katrina destroyed so many lives and so much property 16 years earlier to the day.
As meteorologists at the National Weather Service Slidell office, we can’t bear to see this on satellite,” the NWS tweeted on its official account, rare words on a rare day — words they hoped residents in Ida’s path would heed.
“We have hard times ahead, but we will all persevere. Take all messages we, public officials and broadcast media are saying SERIOUSLY. “
Ida a hurricane for history books
The messages that followed were grim. By 11:55 a.m., when it made landfall at Port Fourchon, Louisiana, Ida tied two other storms as the strongest landfalling hurricanes in the state’s history.
“#Hurricane #Ida has made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane with max sustained winds of 150 mph,” Phil Klotzbach tweeted. Klotzbach, a meteorologist and specialist in Atlantic Basin hurricanes, noted, “Ida is tied with the Last Island Hurricane (1856) and Hurricane Laura (2020) for the strongest max sustained winds for a Louisiana landfalling hurricane on record.”
Klotzbach also noted that Ida’s central pressure was 930 hPa, or millibars, compared to 920 for Katrina at its first Louisiana landfall back in 2005. The lower the pressure, the stronger the hurricane.
Unlike the Mississippi Coast, which rebuilt after Category 5 Hurricane Camille in 1969, Louisiana has never experienced a Category 5 storm.
‘Ida is not weakening’
But category is just a number. Ida was unleashing hell Sunday afternoon and evening on Louisiana, with the terror expected to continue as she set her sights on Baton Rouge and upland areas.
Ida was refusing to weaken as so many storms do when they encounter the friction of land.
“#Ida is not weakening,” the NWS New Orleans tweeted after a second landfall at 2 p.m. in Galliano, Louisiana. “This is not what you want to see.”
Ida was skipping over the low-lying bird’s foot of Louisiana, where Gulf meets marsh, without much to slow it down.
“I count 4 mesovortices rotating around the outer portion of #Ida’s eye, evident in the low cloud field,” tweeted Dan Lindsey, a program scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “And the eye is now *completely over land*! I don’t think I’ve seen this before with a storm over land.”
Mesovortices, rotational features within hurricane eyewalls, can produce wind speeds up to 10% higher than in the rest of the eyewall, according to NASA Scientific Visualization Studio.
One meteorologist captured and shared on social media video of Ida storming into Grand Isle, Louisiana. The wind whipped and bent trees while storm surge rushed into buildings abandoned before landfall.
Water and wind stormed into Grand Isle Louisiana, the wind whipping and bending trees while storm surge poured into buildings.
Jim Cantore braces in wind as onlooker cartwheels
Humor lightened the agony.
The Weather Channel’s Jim Cantore, who always lands in the spot where the heart of a hurricane’s destruction is expected, arrived in New Orleans ahead of Ida.
Brian Shields, a meteorologist from WFTV in Orlando, captured a man doing a cartwheel behind Cantore as a braced against a strong wind wearing a helmet for an on-camera update.
“Jim Cantore in a helmet & a guy doing a cartwheel,” Shields tweeted. “Weird times.”
Nola firefigher photographs French Quarter damage
But destruction leavened any humor. The New Orleans Fire Department captured images of a roof torn off a historic French Quarter building at Toulouse and Decatur streets before Ida’s strongest winds moved in.
The helpers who always show up for hurricanes were already on scene in New Orleans.
Jose Andres, founder of World Central Kitchen, had flown from disasters in Haiti to feed residents in southeast Louisiana who would be without power, or maybe kitchens.
Teams from WCK were prepared to feed 100,000. But first, they had to shelter from Ida.
“After the storm passes,” Andres said, “we can then do what we always do, go to other cities and very quickly fire up the kitchens.”
Susan Roesgen of WGNO-TV, a longtime New Orleans newscaster, shared alarming news at 7:30 p.m. on Twitter:
“Producers and directors forced to leave control room during our live coverage — the ceiling has peeled away — we are in the Galleria in Metairie.”
By 5 p.m., with Ida still southwest of New Orleans, Nola.com was reporting that almost 600,000 residences and businesses were without power and the entire East Bank of Jefferson Parish was under a boil water notice because pressure had been lost to the distribution system. Entergy later reported that “catastrophic damage” would mean all of Orleans Parish would lose power.
This story was originally published August 29, 2021 at 9:36 PM.
