NEW ORLEANS (CN) — New Orleans is under a hurricane watch and the entire state of Louisiana is under a state of emergency Friday as Hurricane Ida speeds across the Caribbean Sea with an anticipated Sunday landfall along the Gulf Coast as a Category 3 hurricane.
The storm formed Thursday evening near the Cayman Islands. By all indications, it will hit Cuba before gaining speed and intensity on its way to the Gulf Coast.
“The forecast track has it headed straight towards New Orleans. Not good,” Jim Kossin, a climate and hurricane scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said Friday morning.
Forecasters are predicting Ida will strengthen quickly into a major hurricane before making landfall near the Mississippi River delta late Sunday or early Monday morning.
The mayor of Grand Isle, Louisiana, a town on a barrier island in the Gulf, called for voluntary evacuation Thursday evening and said evacuation would become mandatory by Friday.
“Ida certainly has the potential to be very bad,” Brian McNoldy, a hurricane researcher at the University of Miami, told the Associated Press. “It will be moving quickly, so the trek across the Gulf from Cuba to Louisiana will only take 1.5 days.”
Ida’s maximum sustained winds rose swiftly from 45 mph to 60 mph as it moved from Grand Cayman toward Cuba at about 15 mph. Tropical force winds extended as far as 80 miles from the center of the storm.
The storm is forecast to drop up to 20 inches of rain over western Cuba, with a possibility of flash floods and mudslides.
Ida is expected to bring between 8 and 16 inches of rain, with 20 inches in isolated areas, from southeast Louisiana to coastal Mississippi and Alabama through Monday morning. Additional heavy rains are likely throughout Mississippi when Ida moves inland, bringing the possibility of “considerable” flooding, the hurricane center said.
A hurricane advisory was in effect Friday morning from Cameron Parish, Louisiana, near the Louisiana-Texas border, to the Mississippi-Alabama border.
“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,” Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards said in a statement Friday.
Edwards added that people across Louisiana should be in the location where they intend to ride out the storm by Saturday evening.
A hurricane watch was in effect Friday, covering metropolitan New Orleans. Lake Pontchartrain and Lake Maurepas.
Dangerous storm surge was also forecast for the Gulf Coast, with expected tides between 7 and 11 feet 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 National Hurricane Center said.
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