Hurricane Ida pummeled New Orleans and the Louisiana coast overnight with lashing rain and ferocious gusts, leaving much of the region without electricity and bracing for widespread floods and devastation.
The storm, wielding some of the most powerful winds ever to hit the state, drove a wall of water inland when it thundered ashore Sunday as a Category 4 hurricane. All of New Orleans was without power when evening fell. And as Ida lumbers north, it’s expected to unleash a potentially catastrophic amount of rain, totaling up to 61 centimeters.
"We’re in for some historic floods,” said Jim Rouiller, lead meteorologist at the Energy Weather Group. "The rainfall — that is going to be the next story.”
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