Weather Outside Your Window: Where Ida stands among the worst hurricanes to hit Louisiana

By Adriana Navarro, AccuWeather staff writer

Published Sep. 1, 2021 2:33 PM EDT

It struck on Aug. 29 after rapidly intensifying over the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The storm surge that it ushered in caused some of the worst flooding seen in the New Orleans area in years, but this wasn't Hurricane Katrina.

Sixteen years to the day that Hurricane Katrina overwhelmed the levees of New Orleans, Hurricane Ida crashed ashore, coming within 30 miles of the city's downtown as the storm tracked inland. But while the date of landfall evoked memories of Hurricane Katrina, there's another hurricane that AccuWeather forecasters say also compares to Ida.

Hurricane Katrina was a monster of a storm, setting a high bar for comparison. Its faster forward speed and larger wind field, compared to Ida, contributed to its disastrous storm surge, and the diameter of Katrina stretched across 680 miles, according to AccuWeather Hurricane Expert Dan Kottlowski. For a quick comparison, the driving distance from New Orleans to St. Louis is roughly 679 miles -- about 600 miles if a straight line were followed. Hurricane-force winds from Katrina extended in a 125-mile radius from the center of the storm and were able to reach the Mississippi coast whereas the strongest of Ida's winds were unable to reach that area.

The diameter of Ida was a bit smaller at 414 miles. The distance from New Orleans to Memphis by car is roughly 394 miles, or about 359 in a straight path.

Hurricane Ida (top) and Hurricane Katrina (bottom) are shown near landfall in Louisiana via NOAA satellites.

The tracks also differed significantly, with Katrina tracking to the east of New Orleans, sparing it the brunt of the damaging winds.

"That meant the 'Big Easy' was on the left side of Katrina where the winds are weaker due to more frictional force," Kottlowski said. "Ida passed just west of New Orleans between 20 and 40 miles. That put New Orleans in the stronger east and northeast parts of the hurricane's circulation."

As a result, he added, the city experienced more wind and wind damage from Ida than from Katrina.

Also, New Orleans was impacted by a major hurricane for the second time in just 10 months when Ida stormed by the city. In late in October of last year, Hurricane Zeta made a direct hit on New Orleans as a Category 3 storm, packing 115-mph winds. Zeta's eye eventually tracked directly over the city, qualifying as a direct hit, according to the definition by the National Hurricane Center (NHC).

An AccuWeather radar image showing the eye of Hurricane Ida passing over Lockport, Louisiana, about 35 miles west of New Orleans, on Sunday, Aug. 29, 2021.

AccuWeather

Even though the impacts to those living in New Orleans may have felt like a direct hit, and the entire city's power was knocked out, New Orleans escaped a textbook hit by Ida. And it did so by a matter of fewer than 20 miles.

Kottlowski said Ida's "eyewall missed downtown by 18 miles" when the center of the storm made its closest approach to the city. "Technically, it was not a direct hit," he said. "But it was damn close." Kottlowski added that whether or not a direct hit occurred will be looked at by the NHC as part of a reanalysis of Ida in a few months.

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Another storm that Kottlowski says also compared to Ida shares a few characteristics with both Ida and Katrina.

Hurricane Betsy made landfall in southeastern Louisiana on Sept. 9, 1965, at Grand Isle, Louisiana, within 20 miles of where Hurricane Ida made landfall at Port Fourchon. While Betsy was originally thought to have made landfall as a Category 3 hurricane, researchers in 2019 determined that the hurricane had reached Category 4 strength with maximum sustained winds of 132 mph upon landfall. A Category 4 hurricane has maximum sustained winds between 130 mph and 156 mph.

Workers armed with shovels clear away debris left by Hurricane Betsy after it slammed into the Gulf coast Sept. 10, 1965. The workers were cleaning up wreckage around a Biloxi hotel. (AP Photo)

The storm's center went on to pass over Houma, just as Ida would 56 years later, before soon weakening.

Like Katrina, Betsy had a much larger wind field, with its hurricane-force wind speeds extending along the Mississippi coast. It was the first hurricane to result in more than $1 billion in damages. In today's currency, that's equivalent to more than $8.3 billion, paling in comparison to the $70 billion to $80 billion that AccuWeather Founder and CEO Dr. Joel N. Myers estimated Hurricane Ida will cost in total damage and economic losses.

When comparing to the strongest contiguous U.S. landfalling hurricanes in the record books, which date back to 1851, Ida ranks as the seventh-strongest hurricane to make landfall in the contiguous U.S., tied with several other storms sustained wind speed, but with a lower central barometric pressure. What's more: with a barometric pressure of 27.46 inches of mercury (930 mb), Ida is considered to have been stronger than Hurricane Laura at landfall, which crashed ashore in southwestern Louisiana in late August 2020 with 150 mph sustained winds.

While both made landfall with maximum sustained winds of 150 mph, Laura's central pressure was at 27.73 inches of mercury (939 mb). Lower central pressure corresponds to a higher intensity storm.

AccuWeather's RealVue™ Satellite
image showed Hurricane Ida's eye as it was nearing landfall late in the morning on Sunday, Aug. 29, 2021.

(AccuWeather)

The only two Category 4 hurricanes that had a lower central pressure than Ida were the 1919 Florida Keys hurricane at 27.37 inches of mercury (927 mb) and the 1886 Indianola hurricane at 27.32 inches of mercury (925 mb).

Extreme Meteorologist Reed Timmer drove through Hurricane Ida on Aug. 29 at Houma, Louisiana, to get to the area of the storm with the lowest pressure: the eye of the hurricane.

He described "punching through the eye" as the most intense part, which required him to dodge flying debris.

"It feels like a very large tornado that's probably about 10-15 miles wide," Timmer told AccuWeather. "Then, once you punch through the intense wind and the whiteout conditions inside the eye wall, then you suddenly emerge into the eye and everything is dead calm."

Crews took the hour or so of calm as an opportunity to clean up the damage despite the noticeably dropping pressure.

"There's kind of this feeling of sinking motion and subsistence in there. You could almost feel the heaviness of the air inside the eye," Timmer said. He added that birds could be seen falling out of the sky as well, an occurrence that happens when birds become trapped inside a hurricane and can't escape the eyewall.

"It's a surreal feeling being inside the eye of such a monster hurricane like that."