Hurricane Ida blasted the Louisiana coast on Sunday, with the eye of one of the most powerful storms to ever hit the U.S. coming ashore near the barrier island of Grand Isle. The powerful Category 4 storm made landfall came on the same date Hurricane Katrina ravaged Louisiana and Mississippi 16 years earlier, about 64 kilometres west of where Category 3 Katrina first struck land. More than 100,000 customers had lost power in Louisiana by noon and were without electricity, according to PowerOutage.US, which tracks outages nationwide. 'Ida will most definitely be stronger than Katrina'Comparisons to the Aug. 29, 2005, landfall of Katrina weighed heavily on residents bracing for Ida. Hurricane Ida nearly doubled in strength, going from 135 km/h storm to 240 km/h storm in just 24 hours, which meteorologists called "explosive intensification."

Source: CBC News August 29, 2021 09:43 UTC