Hurricane Ida hits Cuba with heavy wind and rain
Hurricane Ida struck Cuba on Friday (Saturday NZ time). She threatened to slam into Louisiana with devastating force over the weekend, prompting evacuations in New Orleans and across the coastal region.
The governor urged residents to prepare quickly, saying: “By nightfall tomorrow night, you need to be where you intend to be to ride out the storm.”
New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell ordered a mandatory evacuation for a small city area outside the levee system. But with the storm intensifying so much over a short time, she said it wasn’t possible to do so for the entire city. That generally calls for using all lanes of some highways to leave the city.
Ida intensified Friday rapidly from a tropical storm to a hurricane with top winds of 80m/h (128km/h) as it crossed western Cuba. The National Hurricane Centre predicted it would strengthen into an extremely dangerous Category 4 hurricane, with top winds of 140m/h (225km/h) before landfall on the US Gulf Coast late Sunday.
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