New Orleans and Gulf Coast hunker down as Hurricane Nate nears

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - The US Gulf Coast braced for Hurricane Nate to make landfall east of New Orleans as a Category 2 storm on Saturday evening, threatening parts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama with torrential rain, flooding and winds of 100 miles per hour (160 km per hour).

Nate, the fourth major storm to strike the United States in less than two months, killed at least 30 people in Central America before entering the warm waters of the Gulf and bearing down on the U.S. South.

The hurricane should make landfall as early as 8 pm Saturday (0100 GMT Sunday), New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu said. Low-lying southeastern Louisiana, just south of the city, was the likely target, the US National Hurricane Center said.

“We’re in the fight now. The storm is on us,” Landrieu told reporters at a briefing on Saturday afternoon, adding that conditions were expected to rapidly deteriorate.

Still a Category 1 hurricane, Nate was approaching the mouth of the Mississippi River at 4 pm Central time, moving north-northwest at 23 mph (37 kph), the NHC said.

Maximum sustained winds were hovering at about 90 mph (145 kph), with higher gusts, but the hurricane could still strengthen to Category 2 before landfall.

The NHC issued a hurricane warning from Grand Isle, Louisiana to the Alabama-Florida border. A state of emergency was declared for more than two dozen Florida counties and for the states of Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi.

New Orleans, about 60 miles (97 km) north of Grand Isle, evacuated some residents from areas outside its levee system as the storm approached. The winds could cause significant power outages in the city, Landrieu said.

Landrieu declared a mandatory curfew in the city from 7 pm Saturday to 7 am Sunday, and urged residents and

an estimated 40,000 visitors to shelter in place overnight, when the worst conditions are expected.

“We have been through this many, many times. There is no need to panic,” Landrieu told reporters, alluding in part to Hurricane Katrina, which triggered severe flooding in New Orleans and killed hundreds of people in August 2005.

But residents of the city known as the “Big Easy” were taking Nate in stride. At a Lowe’s hardware store in the St Roch area of New Orleans, there were short lines around midday and plentiful supplies of propane, generators and plywood.

“They don’t start boarding up until it’s a Category 3,” said employee Paula Clemons. “We’re used to floods. Comes with the territory.”

That said, for some residents of New Orleans, memories of Katrina and Hurricane Betsy in 1965 were still vivid.