Weakened but still potent, Tropical Storm Barry inundated the Gulf Coast, but appeared unlikely to deluge New Orleans as it continued its slow advance.
Still, Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards on Saturday night urged residents across south Louisiana to stay “vigilant,” warning that Barry could still cause disastrous flooding across a wide stretch of the Gulf Coast overnight.
“This storm still has a long way to go before it leaves this state,” Edwards said. “Don’t let your guard down.”
Photo: AFP
Forecasters early yesterday issued a flash flood warning that covers Mississippi’s capital city.
The US National Weather Service said that up to 7.6cm of rain had already fallen in the Jackson area — and more was on the way.
Before dawn yesterday, a narrow band of heavy rain was still streaming north through Jackson. The weather service said that could bring an additional 5cm of rain to the area.
New Orleans had been braced for heavy rains on Saturday, with forecasters warning it could get up to 50cm of rain, raising concerns that water pumps strengthened after Hurricane Katrina would be overwhelmed.
Authorities closed floodgates and raised water barriers around the city. It was the first time since Katrina that all floodgates in the New Orleans area had been sealed.
However, the city instead had intermittent bands of moderate showers and occasional sunshine.
Although Barry was expected to continue to dump rain throughout the weekend, forecasters downgraded rainfall estimates for the city through yesterday to between 5 to 10cm.
Nevertheless, National Weather Service forecaster Robert Ricks cautioned that it was too early to say for certain that New Orleans was in the clear.
“We’re about at the [halfway] mark of the marathon right now,” he said on Saturday evening.
He said heavy rainfall from the storm would be concentrated overnight in a wide area centered around Lafayette, which is about 193km west of New Orleans.
In other parts of Louisiana on Saturday, Barry flooded highways, forced people to scramble to rooftops and dumped heavy rain, as it made landfall near Intracoastal City, about 257km west of New Orleans. Downpours also lashed coastal Alabama and Mississippi.
By late on Saturday night, the storm’s maximum sustained winds had fallen to 80kph.
US Coast Guard helicopters rescued a dozen people and two pets from flooded areas of Terrebonne Parish, south of New Orleans, some of them from rooftops, a spokeswoman said.
None of the main levees on the Mississippi River failed or were breached, and they were expected to hold up through the storm, Edwards said.
In some places, residents continued to build defenses against rising water. At the edge of the town of Jean Lafitte just outside New Orleans, volunteers helped several town employees sandbag a 180m stretch of the two-lane state highway.
“I’m here for my family, trying to save their stuff,” volunteer Vinnie Tortorich said. “My cousin’s house is already under.”
More than 140,000 customers in Louisiana and another more than 4,000 customers in Mississippi were without power early yesterday, according to poweroutage.us.
Barry was expected to move over Arkansas last night and today, and forecasts showed the storm on a path toward Chicago that would swell the Mississippi River basin with water that must eventually flow south again.
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