Angry Cristobal lashes Louisiana
NEW ORLEANS: A lopsided Tropical Storm Cristobal came ashore on Sunday in Louisiana and ginned up dangerous weather much farther east, sending waves crashing over Mississippi beaches, swamping parts of an Alabama island town and spawning a tornado in Florida.
Cristobal made an afternoon landfall between the mouth of the Mississippi River and the since-evacuated barrier island resort community of Grand Isle, the storm packing 85km/h winds.
The storm had begun weakening as it moved inland late on Sunday night although heavy rainfall and a storm surge were continuing along the Gulf Coast, posing a threat across a wide area into the Florida Panhandle.
The storm was centred about 35km north-northwest of New Orleans and it packed sustained winds of 75km/h.
With its drenching rains, Cristobal was expected to keep inundating the northern Gulf coast well into yesterday.
In Alabama, the bridge linking the mainland to Dauphin Island was closed for much of Sunday.
Police and state transportation department vehicles led convoys of motorists to and from the island when breaks in the weather permitted.
Elsewhere in south Louisiana, water covered the only road to Grand Isle and in low-lying parts of Plaquemines Parish at the state’s south-eastern tip.
“You can’t go down there by car,” shrimper Acy Cooper said of one marinas in the area.
“You have to go by boat.” Although Cristobal was well below hurricane strength at landfall, forecasters warned that the storm would affect a wide area stretching roughly 290km along the Gulf Coast.
In Florida, a tornado – the second in two days in the state as the storm approached – uprooted trees and downed power lines south of Lake City near Interstate 75, the weather service and authorities said.
The storm also forced a waterlogged stretch of Interstate 10 in north Florida to close for a time on Sunday.
Rain fell intermittently in New Orleans famed French Quarter on Sunday afternoon, but the streets were nearly deserted, with many businesses already boarded up due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Daniel Priestman said he didn’t see people frantically stocking up as they had done in previous storms.
He said people were probably “overwhelmed” by the coronavirus and recent police violence and protests.
They seemed “resigned to whatever happens happens”, he said.
At one New Orleans intersection, a handmade “Black Lives Matter” sign, wired to a lamp-post, rattled in a stiff wind as the crew of a massive vacuum truck worked to unclog a storm drain.
The Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans said the city’s ageing street drainage system had limits, so residents should avoid underpasses and low-lying areas prone to inevitable street flooding.
Forecasters said some parts of Louisiana and Mississippi were in danger of as much as 30cmof rain, with storm surges of up to 1.5 metres.
“It’s very efficient, very tropical rainfall,” National Hurricane Center director Ken Graham said in a Facebook video.
“It rains a whole bunch real quick.” Jefferson Parish, a suburb of New Orleans, called for voluntary evacuations on Saturday of some low-lying communities because of threatened storm surges, high tides and heavy rain.
President Donald Trump had agreed to issue an emergency declaration for Louisiana, officials said.