Hurricane Ida lays waste to New Orleans and Louisiana, weakens into Mississippi

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Originally published at: Hurricane Ida lays waste to New Orleans and Louisiana, weakens into Mississippi | Boing Boing

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Is it just me, or has Louisiana been smacked by a higher than usual number of hurricanes over the last 10 years or so?

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Almost as if there has been some kind of change in the Earth’s climate taking place.

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The river reversing sounds crazier than it is. The Mississippi always has water going both directions. In New Orleans the river surface is ~10 feet above sea level and the bottom ~200 feet (~60 m) below it. This causes permanent currents heading north from the Gulf deeper in the channel.

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The category 4 storm was among the strongest ever to hit the Gulf Coast…

The strongest storm to hit the Gulf Coast so far…

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Is there any science to back that up? /s

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The power went out to a region with hospitals full to capacity with patients they couldn’t move, at a time when they were running low on oxygen and now roads are impassable - I’m guessing the death toll is still climbing and will be for a while after the storm.

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Yeah the initial news reports seemed to be “well at least the death toll hasn’t been as bad as Katrina…” but I’m not confident that situation will last. Even in hurricane Katrina it took both the government and the media at least a day or two to even begin to realize the scope of the problem they were facing.

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Maybe post-Katrina, more people took evacuation warnings more seriously? Hopefully?

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A lot of people didn’t stay in the path of Katrina out of stubbornness, they stayed because they didn’t have the means to relocate anywhere safer. I doubt that factor has dramatically changed for the better, if anything the number of unhoused and under-housed people in the U.S. has only risen since then.

We’re also fast approaching a time when the ever-worse effects of climate change will mean there won’t be any safe places left to evacuate to. The places that aren’t at risk of flooding may be on fire. Or at least sheltering enough people fleeing fires that they won’t have any extra space for hurricane refugees.

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The problem is, a lot of people stayed this time because they couldn’t be evacuated. They wanted to evacuate hospitals, but they couldn’t - because no hospital in the state, or any surrounding state, had room for the patients. Now their power has been disrupted and supplies are dwindling.

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In some cases cops even shot at people trying to flee the devastation on foot. (No points for correctly guessing the skin color of the refugees those cops were shooting at.)

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Most of the flooding came from broken levees in the days after Katrina passed. Ida did as much wind damage as Katrina, but the storm surge was much less in the lake and none of the levees or flood walls have busted.

The healthcare problems due to covid and hospitals without power are real and will continue to be a major issue in the coming weeks, but there is no reason to expect a rising death toll from the storm or flooding as we had post-K

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