The National Hurricane Center will upgrade Ida from Tropical Storm to Hurricane soon. Hurricane Hunter Aircraft just reported hurricane status winds of 75 mph.
The storm must traverse the mountains of Cuba which may weaken her some but when she gets into the Gulf of Mexico it will be scary to watch! She almost certainly will go to CAT 3 before reaching the northern Gulf Coast Sunday night and, a CAT 4 is not out of the question.
Katrina vs. Ida: Katrina made landfall along the Louisiana coast Aug 29, 2005 as a CAT 3 hurricane. Ida may very well do the same but a little further to the west. 1800 lives were lost during Katrina largely as a result of fatal engineering flaws in the flood protection system around the city of New Orleans.
Huge improvements have been made to those levees since 2005. However, Ida may come in further west putting New Orleans in a more dangerous situation than Katrina. If you know anyone down there, please encourage them to have a plan to get out. I remember the horrible scenes from people stranded on their roof tops!
I will go live at 5:pm central this afternoon with the very latest.
