Another Katrina? Isaac Threat To Gulf Coast Well Beyond New Orleans

With its massive size and ponderous movement, Tropical Storm Isaac was gaining strength Monday as it headed toward the Gulf Coast. The next 24 hours would determine whether it brought the usual punishing rains and winds of a tropical system — or something far worse.

Forecasters expected Isaac to become a hurricane before making landfall, most likely along the Louisiana or Mississippi coast. Its sheer size — tropical-storm-force winds extending hundreds of miles — meant the threat stretched well beyond New Orleans, across the entire northern Gulf.

The timing could not have been more fraught. Seven years almost to the day after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, memories were raw — and this time, a presidential nominating convention was in the storm's path. The Republican National Convention in Tampa postponed its Monday opening session as Isaac brushed Florida, forcing organizers to compress four days of programming into three.

Louisiana declared a state of emergency. Mandatory evacuations were ordered for low-lying parishes outside New Orleans' rebuilt levee system, while inside the city, officials urged residents to shelter in place — a measure of confidence in the $14 billion of levee improvements built since Katrina.

Isaac would go on to make landfall near the mouth of the Mississippi on August 29 — the seventh anniversary of Katrina — as a Category 1 hurricane, drenching the region for days. It was no Katrina. But for a Gulf Coast that had rebuilt its defenses and its nerves, it was the first real test.