The National Weather Service Weather Forecast office out of New Orleans and Baton Rouge released the following recount of Katrina…

Hurricane Katrina made landfall along the Southeast Louisiana coastline in Lower Plaquemines Parish near the town of Buras at 710am Monday August 29, 2005. The hurricane made landfall as a strong Category 3 hurricane with winds of 130 mph and a storm surge of 20 feet in Plaquemines Parish.

 As the hurricane moved through St. Bernard Parish…levees in the New Orleans Metro Area were overtopped or failed flooding 80% of the city of New Orleans and nearly 100% of St. Bernard Parish. Winds were still at Category 3 strength with measured gusts to 127 mph in New Orleans East. 

 The hurricane then made a second landfall near the town of Pearlington, MS before heading through Pearl River County and gradually weakening over central Mississippi. The hurricane still had 120 mph winds as it made landfall along the Northshore of Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi Coast causing significant wind damage. However…the most extreme damage occurred along the Mississippi Coast…when a 20-30 foot storm surge inundated areas from Waveland to Pascagoula. Along the shores of Lake Pontchartrain around Slidell…a storm surge of 10 to 15 feet caused signficant damage.

 By the end of this horrible event…around 1500 people had died in Mississippi and Louisiana and an estimated 80 billion dollars in damage had occurred. Images of the destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina on the region are viewable on the map below. There are also radar and satellite images of the hurricane as it moved through the area.

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