US Gulf braces for stormy Sally
HURRICANE Sally drew closer to the US Gulf Coast yesterday, threatening historic floods, the National Hurricane Center said, with more than 61cm of rain expected in some areas.
The second strong storm in less than a month to threaten the region, Sally’s winds decreased to 140km/h, and was 100km/h east of the mouth of the Mississippi River earlier yesterday, the NHC said, moving at a glacial pace of 3km/h.
There were fears it could wallop the Mississippi, Alabama and Florida coasts with massive flash flooding and storm surges of up to 2.7m in some places.
Its slow speed was a reminder of 2017’s Hurricane Harvey which lashed Houston with rain for days.
Nearly 11 000 homes are at risk of storm surge in the larger coastal cities in Alabama and Mississippi, according to estimates from property data and analytics firm CoreLogic.
Alabama Mayor Sandy Stimpson warned residents he expected a “tremendous amount of flooding” and said the city was barricading intersections likely to see high water.
Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana called for evacuations of low-lying areas and President Donald Trump made emergency declarations for all three states, which helps to co-ordinate disaster relief. Ports, schools and businesses closed along the coast.
The US Coast Guard restricted travel on the lower Mississippi River from New Orleans to the Gulf, and closed the ports of Pascagoula and Gulfport, Mississippi, and Mobile.
Energy companies buttoned up or halted oil refineries and pulled workers from offshore oil and gas production platforms. More than a fifth of US offshore oil production was shut.
Mississippi appears more likely for landfall, but Sally’s biggest threat is that it will be a “rainmaker” across a wide swathe of the Gulf Coast, and in areas as far inland as Atlanta, said Jim Foerster, chief meteorologist at DTN, an energy, agriculture and weather data provider.
Sally is the 18th named storm in the Atlantic this year and will be the eighth tropical storm or hurricane to hit the US – something “very rare if not a record” said Dan Kottlowski, senior meteorologist at AccuWeather, noting that accurate data on historic tropical storms can be elusive.