Hurricane Katrina (2005)

Katrina first made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane with 70-knot (81 mph) winds near the Miami-Dade and Broward county line at about 2230 UTC (6:30 p.m. EDT) on August 25.¹ It made landfall near Buras, Louisiana, at 1110 UTC (6:10 a.m. CDT) on August 29 as a Category 3 hurricane with 110-knot (127 mph) winds and a central pressure of 920 mb.¹ Its final landfall came near the mouth of the Pearl River at the Louisiana and Mississippi border at about 1445 UTC (9:45 a.m. CDT), still a Category 3 with 105-knot (121 mph) winds.¹

High water marks show storm surge of about 24 to 28 feet along the Mississippi coast, centered roughly on St. Louis Bay, with a maximum of 27.8 feet at Pass Christian.¹ Surge reached 15 to 19 feet in eastern New Orleans, St. Bernard Parish and Plaquemines Parish.¹ The Mobile State Docks gauge in Alabama measured a storm surge of 11.45 feet.² Several levees and floodwalls in the New Orleans area were overtopped or breached, and about 80 percent of the city flooded, to depths up to about 20 feet.¹ The strongest gust at an official station was 99 knots (114 mph) at Grand Isle, Louisiana.¹ Rain totaled 14.04 inches at Homestead Air Force Base in Florida and 11.63 inches at the NWS office in Slidell, Louisiana.¹ Katrina spawned 43 reported tornadoes, 20 of them in Georgia.¹ NHC counts 1,392 deaths, including 520 direct deaths, 341 of them in Louisiana and 172 in Mississippi.¹ NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information estimates $125 billion in damage in 2005 dollars.¹