Written by MELINDA DESLATTE and SETH BORENSTEIN

Tropical Storm Ida intensified as it swirled toward a strike on Cuba on Friday, showing hallmarks of a rare, rapidly intensifying storm that could speed across warm Gulf waters and slam into Louisiana as a Category 3 hurricane on Sunday, the National Hurricane Center warned.

“The forecast track has it headed straight towards New Orleans. Not good,” said NOAA’s Jim Kossin, a climate and hurricane scientist.

Ida posed a relatively low threat to tobacco-rich western Cuba, where forecasters predicted a glancing blow on Friday. The real danger begins over the Gulf, where forecasts were aligned in predicting Ida will strengthen very quickly into a major hurricane, reaching 115 mph (185 kph) before landfall in the Mississippi River delta late Sunday or early Monday, experts said.

“Ida certainly has the potential to be very bad,” said Brian McNoldy, a hurricane researcher at the University of Miami. “It will be moving quickly, so the trek across the Gulf from Cuba to Louisiana will only take 1.5 days.”

Friday morning, Ida’s maximum sustained winds swiftly rose from 45 mph (75 kph) to 60 mph (95 (kph) as it moved away from Grand Cayman toward Cuba’s Isle of Youth at about 15 mph (24 kph). Tropical storm-force winds extended as far as 80 miles (130 kilometers) from the center.

A hurricane watch for New Orleans and an emergency declaration for the state of Louisiana were declared. Category 3 hurricanes are capable of causing devastating damage.

“Unfortunately, all of Louisiana’s coastline is currently in the forecast cone for Tropical Storm Ida, which is strengthening and could come ashore in Louisiana as a major hurricane as Gulf conditions are conducive for rapid intensification,” said Gov. John Bel Edwards.

“By Saturday evening, everyone should be in the location where they intend to ride out the storm,” the governor added.

A hurricane watch was in effect from Cameron, Louisiana, to the Mississippi-Alabama border — including Lake Pontchartrain, Lake Maurepas and metropolitan New Orleans.

Dangerous storm surge was also possible along the Gulf Coast. If it pushes a storm surge at high tide, Ida could overlap some levees, with 7 to 11 feet (2.1 to 3.4 meters) of water predicted from Morgan City, Louisiana, to Ocean Springs, Mississippi.

“There is an increasing risk of life-threatening storm surge, damaging hurricane-force winds, and heavy rainfall Sunday and Monday, especially along the coast of Louisiana,” the hurricane center said.

The mayor of Grand Isle, a Louisiana town on a narrow barrier island in the Gulf, said a voluntary evacuation late Thursday would become mandatory on Friday.

The storm was forecast to drop up to 20 inches of rain over western Cuba, where deadly flash floods and mudslides were possible. By the time it reaches the central Gulf Coast Sunday afternoon, it could dump 8 to 16 inches (15 to 30 centimeters) of rain, with 20 inches in isolated areas, from southeast Louisiana to coastal Mississippi and Alabama through Monday morning. More heavy rains are likely across Mississippi when Ida moves inland, causing “considerable flash, urban, small stream, and riverine flooding,” the hurricane center said.

 

Related Stories
‹
Southern California Prepares for More Floods as Post-Tropical Storm Hilary Brings More Rain
Written by CHRISTOPHER WEBER, DAMIAN DOVARGANES and JORDI LEBRIJA Tropical Storm Hilary deluged arid parts of Mexico and then drenched Southern California from the coast to the desert resort city of Palm Springs and inland mountains, forcing rescuers to pull several people from swollen rivers. Even as the storm subsides across the coast, flooding and mudslides […]
Hurricane Zeta Speeds Toward a Storm-Weary Louisiana
Hurricane Zeta was speeding toward storm-weary Louisiana with landfall expected Wednesday afternoon just south of New Orleans, where a pump system failure has raised the city’s risk of floods. Life-threatening storm surge and strong winds were expected beginning around midday along the U.S. Gulf Coast, where residents were bracing for the 27th named storm of […]
Fierce Storm Surge Feared as Laura Bears Down on Gulf Coast
Tropical Storm Laura entered the warm and deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday, gathering strength on a path to hit the U.S. coastline as a major hurricane that could unleash a surge of seawater higher than a basketball hoop and swamp entire towns. The National Hurricane Center projected that Laura will become a Category […]
New Orleans Plans To Reopen Bourbon Street as FBI Seeks Clues About Truck Attack That Killed 15
Written by ERIC TUCKER, JIM MUSTIAN, KEVIN McGILL and JACK BROOK NEW ORLEANS (AP) — New Orleans pressed ahead with plans to reopen the city’s famed Bourbon Street on Thursday as investigators kept digging into the background of the U.S. Army veteran who drove a pickup truck into a crowd of New Year’s revelers, killing 15 people. The FBI said it was […]
Hurricane Idalia Unleashes Fury on Florida After Making Landfall as a Dangerous Category 3 Storm
Written by DANIEL KOZIN Hurricane Idalia made landfall on Florida’s west coast as a catastrophic Category 3 storm on Wednesday and unleashed life-threatening storm surges and rainfall across an area that has never before received such pummeling. More than 230,000 customers were without electricity as trees snapped by strong winds brought down power lines and […]
Louisiana Sends National Guard to Tornado Disaster Area
Written by GERALD HERBERT and REBECCA SANTANA A tornado flipped cars, ripped off rooftops and deposited a house in the middle of a street in the New Orleans area, part of a storm front that caused damage in places as it blew from Texas to South Carolina. Two deaths were attributed to the weather. Other […]
Ida and COVID-19: ‘Twin-Demic’ Slams Louisiana Hospitals
Written by JULIET LINDERMAN and CLAIRE GALOFARO The wind ripped chunks off the hospital’s roof and the entire building rumbled. One nurse said the cement pounding into the walls sounded like the loudest bowling alley she could imagine. Another felt like she was inside a meteor shower. One of the most powerful hurricanes in the […]
Cleanup Boats on Scene of Large Gulf Oil Spill Following Ida
Written by MICHAEL BIESECKER The U.S. Coast Guard said Saturday that cleanup crews are responding to a sizable oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico following Hurricane Ida. The spill, which is ongoing, appears to be coming from a source underwater at an offshore drilling lease about two miles south of Port Fourchon, Louisiana. The […]
After Ida Soaks Northeast US, Cleanup and Mourning Continues
The cleanup — and mourning — continued Friday as the Northeast U.S. recovered from record-breaking rainfall from the remnants of Hurricane Ida. At least 48 people in five states died as storm water cascaded into people’s homes and engulfed automobiles, overwhelming urban drainage systems never meant to handle so much rain in such a short […]
Death Toll Rises After Ida’s Remnants Hit Northeast
Written by DAVID PORTER and MARK SCOLFORO The remnants of Hurricane Ida inundated large swaths of the northeastern U.S. with historic and unanticipated fury Wednesday night, killing at least 14 people in flooding in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania as basement apartments suddenly filled with water, rivers and creeks swelled to record levels and […]
›