Twenty years ago, people in New Orleans were caught off-guard by Hurricane Katrina, with forecasters originally predicting it was going to make landfall several hundred miles east. Andrew Greenstein reports technology has evolved since then.
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On this day 20 years ago, New Orleans residents who had no place to go walked into the Superdome to take shelter from Hurricane Katrina. Jeff Palermo has the story.
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Is tonight the night that Northwestern State football wins its first game since November of 2022? Andre Champagne has the story.
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The 90th annual Shrimp and Petroleum Festival gets underway this evening in Morgan City. It’s a celebration of two of Louisiana’s biggest industries; but last year, genetic testing done at five vendors that claimed to be selling local shrimp found that four of them were actually selling imported shrimp. Festival President Charlie Solar Jr. says there will be no such shenanigans this year – all shrimp is required to be domestically caught, and organizers will make sure of that.
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Solar says there will be several events through Labor Day, including a shrimp cook-off Saturday morning.
There will also be live music and plenty of activities for kids. Solar says the best part is it costs absolutely nothing to get in.
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Twenty years ago, people left work on Friday afternoon, not thinking that Hurricane Katrina was going to upend their lives that Monday. That’s because back then, Katrina’s original forecast track had it making landfall over Pensacola, Florida. However, a very sudden westward shift in its track brought it over New Orleans instead, causing the widespread destruction that the city is still trying to recover from to this very day. LSU Public Health Climatologist Barry Keim says technology has evolved in the last two decades — and so has hurricane forecasting.
Keim says they even have drones that fly into the hurricanes that gather more data than the airplanes do. Keim says predicting where the storms go and how strong they will be has also gotten a lot more precise in the last two decades.
Keim says another thing forecasters are doing now that they weren’t doing 20 years ago is what’s called ensemble forecasting – essentially doing many runs of a potential hurricane track with very slight variations in the initial conditions.
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Twenty years ago today, thousands of people entered the Superdome to take shelter from Hurricane Katrina, before it destroyed thousands of homes and businesses and took numerous lives. The next morning on August 29th, Katrina’s fierce winds peeled off sections of the Superdome roof. Doug Thornton was the general manager of the Dome at the time.
The helpless feeling would last as it took several days before those who rode out the storm in the Superdome were bused to Houston. A weary Thornton remembers the helicopter ride out of the city and he couldn’t believe the devastation he saw.
But Thornton would return and led the effort to get the iconic stadium ready for football in September of 2006. He says it was not easy as the repairs were expensive and getting the necessary materials and workers was also difficult.
Thornton gives credit to the late Kathleen Blanco, who was the governor at the time. He says Blanco was feeling pressure from the public to use federal recovery dollars to rebuild damaged hospitals, schools, roads and bridges
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FEMA, the state of Louisiana and the NFL paid for the repairs to the Dome. Saints fans and many Louisiana residents will tell you it was worth the 336-million-dollar cost as the Saints won their first game back and the franchise had its best season to date, reaching the NFC title game, lifting the spirits of many.
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We now know how 12-year-old Bryan Vasquez died. New Orleans Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick made the announcement during a brief news conference yesterday afternoon.
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(Bryan Vasquez died from blunt force due to an alligator and subsequently drowned.)
Kirkpatrick says she has formerly requested that the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries eradicate nuisance alligators, and that work started yesterday afternoon.
Bryan was a nonverbal autistic boy who disappeared from his home on August 14th, 12 days before his body was found. Kirkpatrick says the circumstances surrounding Bryan’s disappearance is ongoing.
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The LSU football team has no shortage of wide receivers this season after bringing in multiple transfers and several key veterans returned. Quarterback Garrett Nussmeier says the Tigers will be fun to watch with all the talent around him.
Some of the weapons that Nussmeier will have on the offensive side are tight ends Bauer Sharp and Trey’Dez Green. Nussmeier says that he believes in both players’ abilities to execute, particularly in the receiving game.
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The ULM Warhawks kick off their season tonight against Saint Francis in Monroe. Head coach Bryant Vincent enters his second year with the program and says that his team is in a much better place this time around.
ULM ranked 128th out of 133 in passing offense last season, averaging just over 134 yards in the air. Redshirt sophomore quarterback Aidan Armenta will take control of the Warhawks offense. Vincent says that Armenta has all the attributes needed to help the team go far.