State Of Emergency Declared Across Southeastern US As Hurricane Nate Looms
After battering Honduras and Nicaragua with 80 mph winds and torrential rains that caused an estimated $250 million in damage, Hurricane Nate is rapidly advancing toward the US Gulf Coast and is expected to make landfall late Saturday in southeastern Louisiana, not far from where Hurricane Katrina landed in 2005. Experts expect that, once it's course, the storm will have caused as much as $1 billion in damages across the US and Central America, far short of the tens of billions of dollars of destruction wrought by Irma and Harvey.
The storm, packing winds of 85 mph and moving at a speed of 22 mph, is expected to reach category 2 strength before it makes landfall – the third storm to hit the US mainland in six weeks. As a category 2, it’s expected to be weaker than Katrina was when it made landfall as a category 3 in 2005. As of 8 am ET, the storm was 245 miles from the mouth of the Mississippi River, the National Hurricane Center said in its latest advisory. The quick-moving storm was expected to make landfall around Plaquemine Parish in Louisiana, southeast of New Orleans, just like Katrina did.
Fortunately for residents of New Orleans, Nate’s similarities to Katrina end there. Nate is expected to cause only a fraction of the damage that Katrina wrought (though it wouldn’t be the first time this season that forecasters underestimated a Hurricane’s potential for devastation). Katrina brought a 24- to 28-foot (7.3- to 8.5-meter) storm surge with it that killed 1,800 people and flooded New Orleans. Nate’s surge is forecast to reach four to seven feet.
Like Irma and Harvey before it, meteorologists are amazed by Nate’s speed as it sprinted north-northwest away from Honduras at 22 mph, according to the NHC.
“I am amazed at how fast it is moving,” said Matt Rogers, president of the Commodity Weather Group LLC in Bethesda, Maryland. “It just lifted off Honduras and it is going to make landfall in New Orleans by tomorrow.”
Nate may dump as much as 6 inches of rain across U.S. Gulf Coast states, the eastern Tennessee Valley and southern Appalachians through the weekend, the hurricane center said. Some areas may get 10 inches, according to CNN.
With the memory of Katrina’s devastation still fresh in the minds of many residents, Louisiana has begun mandatory evacuations in areas near the levees in both New Orleans and Plaquemines Parish. President Trump on Friday declared an emergency in Louisiana ahead of Nate and ordered federal assistance to supplement state and local response efforts.
New Orleans leaders issued a citywide mandatory curfew beginning at 7 pm Saturday and continuing into Sunday morning until "the severe weather has passed."
As Nola.com reports, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu announced the curfew during a Friday news conference about the coming storm.
At a certain point, officials expect weather conditions to make travel impossible for first-responders, even in answer to
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