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Hurricane Katrina near peak strength
on August 28, 2005
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Hurricane
Katrina formed as Tropical Depression Twelve over the
southeastern Bahamas on August 23, 2005 as the result of an
interaction of a tropical wave and the remains of Tropical
Depression Ten. The system was upgraded to tropical storm status
on the morning of August 24 and at this point, the storm was
given the name Katrina. The tropical storm continued to move
towards Florida, and became a hurricane only two hours before it
made landfall between Hallandale Beach and Aventura, Florida on
the morning of August 25. The storm weakened over land, but it
regained hurricane status about one hour after entering the Gulf
of Mexico.
The storm rapidly intensified
after entering the Gulf, growing from a Category 3 hurricane to
a Category 5 hurricane in just nine hours. This rapid growth was
due to the storm's movement over the "unusually warm"
waters of the Loop Current, which increased wind speeds.[6] On
August 27, the storm reached Category 3 intensity on the Saffir-Simpson
Hurricane Scale, becoming the third major hurricane of the
season. An eyewall replacement cycle disrupted the
intensification, but caused the storm to nearly double in size.
Katrina again rapidly intensified, attaining Category 5 status
on the morning of August 28 and reached its peak strength at
1:00 p.m. CDT that day, with maximum sustained winds of 175 mph
(280 km/h) and a minimum central pressure of 902 mbar. The
pressure measurement made Katrina the fourth most intense
Atlantic hurricane on record at the time, only to be surpassed
by Hurricanes Rita and Wilma later in the season; it was also
the strongest hurricane ever recorded in the Gulf of Mexico at
the time (a record also later broken by Rita). |
| Katrina
made its second landfall at 6:10 a.m. CDT[3] on August 29 as a
Category 3 hurricane with sustained winds of 125 mph (205 km/h)
near Buras-Triumph, Louisiana. At landfall, hurricane-force
winds extended outward 120 miles (190 km) from the center and
the storm's central pressure was 920 mbar. After moving over
southeastern Louisiana and Breton Sound, it made its third
landfall near the Louisiana/Mississippi border with 120mph (195
km/h) sustained winds, still at Category 3 intensity.
Katrina maintained strength
well into Mississippi, finally losing hurricane strength more
than 150 miles (240 km) inland near Meridian, Mississippi. It
was downgraded to a tropical depression near Clarksville,
Tennessee, but its remnants were last distinguishable in the
eastern Great Lakes region on August 31, when it was absorbed by
a frontal boundary. The resulting extratropical storm moved
rapidly to the northeast and affected eastern Canada.
Hurricane Katrina was the
costliest and one of the five deadliest hurricanes in the
history of the United States.It was the sixth-strongest Atlantic
hurricane ever recorded and the third-strongest hurricane on
record that made landfall in the United States. Katrina formed
on August 23 during the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season and
caused devastation along much of the north-central Gulf Coast.
The most severe loss of life and property damage occurred in New
Orleans, Louisiana, which flooded as the levee system
catastrophically failed, in many cases hours after the storm had
moved inland. The hurricane caused severe destruction
across the entire Mississippi coast and into Alabama, as far as
100 miles (160 km) from the storm's center. In the 2005 Atlantic
season, Katrina was the eleventh tropical storm, fifth
hurricane, third major hurricane, and second Category 5
hurricane.
Information courtesy of
Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Katrina
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There are no
words for the shock felt when walking back to your dream
home or what you have given your entire life for - to
see it washed away and devastated wind and water of a
deadly storm. Power so great makes you feel so
small and so helpless ... yet the strength of a people
to start over just to survive ... one family at a time. |
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804.598.9301 email
- katrina@katrina.com |
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