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Hurricane Katrina Relief

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Hurricane Katrina, which made landfall near New Orleans, Louisiana, on August 29, 2005, was one of the most destructive and expensive tropical cyclones to hit the United States. The hurricane's storm surge breached the levees that protected New Orleans from Lake Pontchartrain, flooding most of the city. The hurricane also damaged the coastal regions of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.

Recent estimates have placed the death toll in the thousands and the damage higher than $100 billion, topping Hurricane Andrew as the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history. Over a million people were displaced — a humanitarian crisis on a scale unseen in the U.S. since the Great Depression

New Orleans Flooding
The storm made landfall at 6:10am CDT. After 11:00am CDT, several sections of the levee system in New Orleans collapsed. Mandatory evacuation of New Orleans had been ordered by the mayor Ray Nagin before the hurricane struck, on August 28. The order was repeated on August 31. By early September, people were being forcibly evacuated, mostly by bus to neighboring states.

Federal disaster declarations blanketed 90,000 square miles (233,000 km²) of the United States, an area almost as large as the United Kingdom. The hurricane left an estimated five million people without power, and it may take up to two months for all power to be restored. On September 3, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff described the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina as "probably the worst catastrophe, or set of catastrophes" in the country's history, referring to the hurricane itself plus the flooding of New Orleans.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) issued a statement on August 23 saying that Tropical Depression Twelve had formed over the southeastern Bahamas. The numbering of the system was debated, as Tropical Depression Twelve formed partially from the remains of Tropical Depression Ten. The naming and numbering rules at the NHC require a system to keep the same identity if it dies, then regenerates, which would normally have caused this storm to remain numbered Ten. However, the NHC gave this storm a new number because a second disturbance merged with the remains of Tropical Depression Ten on August 20, and there is no way to tell whether the remnants of T.D. Ten should be credited with this storm. (This is different from Hurricane Ivan in the 2004 season, when the NHC ruled that Ivan did indeed reform; the remnant of Ivan that regenerated in the Gulf of Mexico was a distinct system from the moment Ivan originally dissipated to the moment it regained tropical storm strength[2].) The system was upgraded to Tropical Storm Katrina on the morning of August 24. Katrina became the fourth hurricane of the 2005 season on August 25 and made landfall later that day around 6:30 p.m. between Hallandale Beach and Aventura, Florida.

Hurricane Katrina depicted on a NASA sea surface temperature map.
Katrina weakened over land on August 26, becoming a tropical storm before growing to a Category 2 hurricane with winds of 100 mph. It became clear the storm was headed for Mississippi and Louisiana.

On August 27, the storm was upgraded to category 3 intensity (major hurricane) and at 12:40 a.m. CDT (0540 UTC) on August 28, Katrina was upgraded to Category 4. Later that morning, Katrina went through a period of rapid intensification, with its maximum sustained winds strengthening to 175 mph (281 km/h) (well above the Category 5 threshold of 156 mph (250 km/h)), gusts of 215 mph (344 km/h) and central pressure of 23.635 inches (906 mbar) (hPa) by 1:00 p.m. CDT. It later reached a minimum pressure of 902 mbar (hPa), making it the fourth most intense Atlantic Basin hurricane on record.
Katrina made landfall on August 29 as a Category 4 hurricane with winds of 140 mph at 6:10 a.m. CDT near Buras-Triumph, Louisiana. A few hours later, it made landfall for a third time near the Louisiana/Mississippi border with 125 mph (200 km/h) Category 3 winds.

Katrina weakened thereafter, losing hurricane-strength more than 100 miles (160 km) inland, near Laurel, Mississippi. It was downgraded to a tropical depression near Clarksville, Tennessee and continued to race northward.
Katrina, which affected a very wide swath of land covering a large portion of eastern North America, was last seen in the eastern Great Lakes region on August 31. Before being absorbed by the frontal boundary, Katrina's last known position was over southeast Quebec and northern New Brunswick. On August 31, Katrina became a powerful extratropical low on province of Quebec that give 50 to 170 mm (1.97 to 6.69 in) of rain in 12 hours, also numerous wind gust from 50 to 98 km/h (31 to 61 mph) were reported in southern and eastern Quebec. In the region of Saguenay and Cote-Nord, rain cause breakdown and failure in roads, Cote-Nord region was isolated from rest of Quebec for at least 1 week.

Its lowest minimum pressure at landfall was 27.108 inches (918 mbar) (hPa), making it the third strongest hurricane on record to make landfall on the United States. A 15 to 30 foot (5 to 9 m) storm surge came ashore on virtually the entire coastline from Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama to Florida. The 30 foot (10 m) storm surge recorded at Biloxi, Mississippi is the highest ever observed in America.

At 11 p.m. EDT on August 31 (0300 UTC, September 1), U.S. government weather officials announced that the center of the remnant low of what was Katrina had been completely absorbed by a frontal boundary in southeastern Canada, with no discernible circulation. The Hydrometeorological Prediction Center's last public advisory on Katrina was at 11 p.m. EDT on August 31 and the Canadian Hurricane Centre's last public advisory on Katrina was at 9 a.m. EDT on August 31.

According to reports from The Weather Channel, as of September 14, 2005, the National Hurricane Center is considering a reclassification of Hurricane Katrina on the Saffir-Simpson scale to a Category 5 storm at landfall. The reclassification would be based on the storm surge and central pressure data of the storm at landfall. New Orleans Hurricane Insurance Help.