New Orleans residents braced Monday for Tropical Storm Sally as it makes its way up the Gulf of Mexico and is expected to make landfall as a hurricane.
The storm is forecast to bring life-threatening storm surges, strong winds and flash floods to the Northern Gulf Coast as soon as late Monday.
A hurricane warning is in effect from Morgan City, Louisiana, about 85 miles west of New Orleans, all the way to the Mississippi/Alabama border. A hurricane watch is under effect from the Mississippi/Alabama border to Alabama’s border with Florida.
Sally is currently moving up the Gulf at around eight miles per hour and is expected to slow down as it becomes a hurricane. According to the National Hurricane Center, the storm’s center should arrive in southeastern Louisiana on Monday afternoon and hit the areas under hurricane warnings on Tuesday.
The storm is currently seeing maximum sustained winds of 65 miles per hour, which are forecast to increase.
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards declared a state of emergency Saturday as the storm moved in.
“While we ultimately don’t know where Sally will make landfall, much of Southeast Louisiana is in the storm’s cone and the risk of tropical storm force or hurricane strength winds continues to increase,” Edwards said in a statement over the weekend. “This storm has the potential to be very serious.”
Louisiana is still reeling from Hurricane Laura, which hit in late August as a Category 4 storm and destroyed much of Lake Charles. Electric services remain “severely limited” in much of the city, which is also under a boil advisory for water.
Sally is not expected to bring as intense surges and winds as Laura, but at the mouth of the Mississippi River, storm surges levels, which vary based on the tidal cycles, could reach as high as 11 feet.
“Overtopping of local levees outside of the Hurricane and Storm Damage Risk Reduction System is possible” in some areas, the National Hurricane Center said in its Monday forecast. “The deepest water will occur along the immediate coast in areas of onshore winds, where the surge will be accompanied by large and damaging waves.”
Sally will also bring heavy rain to parts of the Gulf Coast, the hurricane center said, averaging 8 to 16 inches of rain with some areas between the western Panhandle and the Central Gulf seeing as much as 24 inches.
“Life-threatening flash flooding is possible,” the center said. “In addition, this rainfall will likely lead to widespread minor to isolated major flooding on area rivers.”
The center also said “a tornado or two” may occur Monday afternoon near the Florida Panhandle, and the coasts of Mississippi, Alabama and southeastern Louisiana.
