READY FOR THE WORST
Expected to strengthen into hurricane before landfall Saturday
Matt Harrington boards up a shoe store Thursday near the French Quarter in New Orleans as tropical storm Barry barreled toward rain- soaked New Orleans.
The first major storm system expected to strike the United States this hurricane season strengthened into Tropical Storm Barry on Thursday, continuing to dump rain along already inundated parts of the Gulf Coast before its expected landfall on Saturday.
The National Hurricane Center said it could become a Category 1 hurricane by late Friday. The slow- moving storm, which is heading westward to Louisiana at about 5 miles per hour, was partly to blame for flash flooding in some neighborhoods in New Orleans on Wednesday. Residents who had spent much of the day dealing with floodwaters braced for what was to come: more rain, and a lot of it.
New Orleans is at the eastern edge of the forecast models for the storm’s path, which show that its center could make landfall almost anywhere along the Louisiana coast. The model from the National Hurricane Center also shows the potential for major flooding as far inland as Baton Rouge and southwestern portions of Mississippi.
Heavy rains may also inundate Mississippi and Texas.
About 10 to 20 inches of rain was predicted to fall starting late Thursday night through Sunday night. “The rain is going to be there because it’s a very slow- moving storm,” said Freddie Zeigler, a lead forecaster in the New Orleans/ Baton Rouge office of the National Weather Service. “Some of the areas that do not usually flood can flood.” That rain will come after the five to eight inches of rain many New Orleans neighborhoods received on Wednesday.
The Mississippi River, already swollen by spring rains, is expected to crest at New Orleans this weekend at close to 20 feet. The city’s levees along the river are between 20 and 25 feet high, according to Ricky Boyett, the spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers in the New Orleans District. The Mississippi River is
16⅕ currently at feet, Mike Efferson of the National Weather Service said Thursday evening.
“We’ll be getting to the top of some of our lower levees if the forecast holds,” he said, cautioning that it was still too early to lock in a prediction.
Mr. Boyett said the Corps was trying to identify any low areas and reinforce them.
The city’s pump system is capable of drawing off one inch of water in the first hour after rainfall, but it falls to half an inch per hour after that, according to the Sewerage and Water Board. Though the 10 to 20 inches of expected rain will be spread out over days, there may be times when the rainfall exceeds the pumps’ limits.
The wind picked up to tropical storm speeds of at least 39 mph on Thursday morning.