Gulf braces for hurricane

Barry may descend on area

NEW ORLEANS—A hurricane warning was issued for parts of the Louisiana coast ahead of Tropical Storm Barry’s arrival, which is the same storm that is projected to come through the Texarkana region later in the weekend.

Barry is currently a tropical storm with winds of about 40 mph and was offshore about 90 miles south of the

mouth of the Mississippi River.

Forecasters say the storm is likely to become a Category 1 hurricane before making landfall Friday or early Saturday.

Thousands of Louisianans broke out sandbags or fled to higher ground Thursday in anticipation for the first hurricane of the season that could pose a severe test of New Orleans’ improved post-Katrina flood defenses.

National Guard troops and rescue crews in high-water vehicles took up positions around the state as Louisiana braced for the arrival of the storm Friday night or early Saturday.

Barry could have winds of about 75 mph (120 kph), just barely over the 74 mph threshold for a hurricane, when it comes ashore, making it a Category 1 storm, forecasters said.

But it is expected to bring more than a foot and a half of rain in potentially ruinous downpours that could go on for hours as the storm passes through the metropolitan area of nearly 1.3 million people and pushes slowly inland.

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, who declared an emergency earlier in the week as the storm brewed in the Gulf of Mexico, warned that the storm’s blow could form a dangerous combination with the already-high Mississippi River, which has been swelled by heavy rain and snowmelt upriver this spring.

“There are three ways that Louisiana can flood: storm surge, high rivers and rain,” Edwards said. “We’re going to have all three.”

He said authorities do not expect the Mississippi River to spill over its levees—something that has never happened in New Orleans’ modern history—but cautioned that a change in the storm’s direction or intensity could alter that.

As of late Thursday afternoon, Barry was about 90 miles south of the mouth of the Mississippi, with winds around 40 mph. A hurricane warning was posted for a 100-mile stretch of Louisiana coastline just below Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

The National Hurricane Center said as much as 20 inches (50 centimeters) of rain could fall in parts of eastern Louisiana, including Baton Rouge, and the entire region could get as much as 10 inches. The New Orleans area could get 10 to 15 inches through Sunday, forecasters said.