It's big, bad Barry
New Orleans braces for monster storm
New Orleans and parts of the Gulf Coast braced Friday for impact from Tropical Storm Barry — a potential hurricane packing devastating rain and wind that could cause up to $10 billion in damages.
“It’s no Katrina,” explained AccuWeather senior meteorologist and lead hurricane forecaster Dan Kottlowski. “But this, by far, will be a very damaging weather event.”
Barry, which was strengthening throughout the day Friday, was slated to become a Category 1 hurricane before making landfall along the Louisiana coast.
“Even though it’s only a Cat 1, it’s still serious and very problematic,” Kottlowski told The Post. “New Orleans had already gotten 10 inches of rain over the last 36 hours, and some places were already facing major flooding problems. Also, the Mississippi River has been flooding. So right now New Orleans is looking at a significant rise in water.”
Meteorologists expect the storm surge in the Big Easy to be between 3 to 5 feet — with up to 18 inches of rain forecast for the entire weekend.
Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the city in 2005, had a storm surge between 25 and 28 feet, according to Kottlowski. “This storm is smaller and the wind is not nearly as strong or as concentrated as it was with Katrina, but it’s still a high-impact storm — and people need to realize this,” the expert said. “It’s a slow-moving storm, and those are the ones that produce the most rainfall.”
Barry was reportedly heading west-northwest across the northern Gulf of Mexico at 5 mph on Friday. It had been expected to make landfall along the Louisiana coast — near Morgan City — on Friday night or early Saturday. New Orleans residents were bracing for a rise in water of up to 5 feet.
Officials issued a storm warning earlier in the day, telling citizens to “stay at home and shelter in place.”
“Have commodities and supplies to last you an upward of 72 hours,” said New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell. “We are continuing to monitor heavy rainfall, storm surge and levels of the Mississippi River.”
“AccuWeather has determined that the overall damage from all this will be between $8 [billion] and $10 billion dollars,” Kottlowski told The Post. “If that doesn’t force people to react to this and listen to their local officials, then I don’t know what else we can tell them.”