Gulf Coast braces for Issac
NEW ORLEANS -- With its massive size and ponderous movement, a strengthening Isaac could become a punishing rain machine depending on its power, speed and where it comes ashore along the Gulf Coast.
The focus has been on New Orleans as Isaac takes dead aim at the city seven years after Hurricane Katrina, but the impact will be felt well beyond the city limits. The storm's winds could be felt more than 200 miles from the storm's center.
The Gulf Coast region has been saturated thanks to a wet summer, and some officials have worried more rain could make it easy for trees and power lines to fall over in the wet ground. Too much water also could flood crops, and wind could topple plants like corn and cotton.
"A large, slow-moving system is going to pose a lot of problems -- winds, flooding, storm surge and even potentially down the road river flooding," said Richard Knabb, director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami. "That could happen for days after the event."
The storm's potential for destruction was not lost on Alabama farmer Bert Driskell, who raises peanuts, cotton, wheat, cattle and sod on several thousand acres near Grand Bay in Mobile County.
"We don't need a lot of water this close to harvest," Driskell said.
However, Isaac could bring some relief to places farther inland, where farmers have struggled with drought.
It also may help replenish a Mississippi River that has at times been so low that barge traffic is halted so engineers can scrape the bottom to deepen it.
Forecasters predicted Isaac would intensify into a Category 1 hurricane by today with top sustained winds of between 74 and 95 mph.
The center of its projected path took Isaac directly toward New Orleans today and Wednesday, but hurricane warnings extended across some 280 miles from Morgan City, La., to the Florida-Alabama state line.
It could become the first hurricane to hit the Gulf Coast since 2008.
Evacuations were ordered for some low-lying areas and across the region, people boarded up homes, stocked up on supplies and got ready for the storm. Schools, universities and businesses closed in many places.
Out East with Doug Geed: Wine harvests, a fish market, baked treats and poinsettias NewsdayTV's Doug Geed visits two wineries and a fish market, and then it's time for holiday cheer, with a visit to a bakery and poinsettia greenhouses.
Out East with Doug Geed: Wine harvests, a fish market, baked treats and poinsettias NewsdayTV's Doug Geed visits two wineries and a fish market, and then it's time for holiday cheer, with a visit to a bakery and poinsettia greenhouses.
