A Silver Lining

In terms of economic damage and lives lost, Katrina may turn out to be one of the worst hurricanes in U.S. history.

But the storm actually turned out to be much less powerful than predicted. Meteorologists say a puff of dry air coming out of the Midwest weakened Katrina just before it reached land, transforming a Category 5 monster into a less-threatening Category 3 storm.

The last-minute gust also pushed Katrina slightly to the east of its Big Easy-bound trajectory, sparing New Orleans a direct hit - though not horrendous harm.

"It was kind of an amazing sequence of events," said Peter Black, a meteorologist at the Hurricane Research Division of the federal government's Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory.
On Sunday, meteorologists watched in awe as one of the most powerful hurricanes they had ever seen churned northward over the Gulf of Mexico on a direct bearing for New Orleans. Fed by unusually warm waters in the central gulf, Katrina easily pumped itself up to a Category 5 monster, with top winds approaching 175 mph. That afternoon a National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration aircraft flying through the storm pegged its minimum barometric pressure at 902 millibars, making Katrina the fourth most powerful hurricane ever observed.

But by the time it reached land Monday, Katrina was no stronger than any of a dozen or more hurricanes that have hit the United States in the past century. Hurricane Camille had a substantially lower central pressure when it slammed into Mississippi in 1969. Hurricane Charley blasted the Sunshine State with higher winds when it came ashore near Tampa last year.