Richard Fausset, Emily Lane and Beau Evans

<h1>NEW ORLEANS — Hurricane Barry crept onto the shores of Louisiana west of flood-weary New Orleans on Saturday, drawing cautious optimism from city residents who saw little rainfall from the storm as of evening, and from officials in western coastal parishes that were drenched and battered but had prepared for much worse.</h1>

After a brief life as a Category 1 hurricane, Barry was downgraded to a tropical storm as it made landfall and continued to weaken. But the threat of flooding brought on by the storm’s incessant rain remained high, particularly in and around Baton Rouge, as the system churned north.

“This is just the beginning,” Gov. John Bel Edwards of Louisiana said at an afternoon news conference. “I ask everyone to stay vigilant and be safe. This has always been projected to be a rain-flood event and it will be.”

The governor said that officials were closely watching the Amite and Comite rivers. These rain-swollen waterways contributed to the catastrophic flooding in and around Baton Rouge in August 2016 that killed 13 people and displaced tens of thousands, some of whom have not been able to move back into their houses.

The Comite River’s crest could be “very close to if not slightly higher than the crest in August of 2016,” Edwards said. “That is obviously not good news here.”

New Orleans may receive only 2 to 4 inches of rain through Monday morning, although more was possible given the storm’s uncertainties, while the Baton Rouge area could see an additional 6 to 10 inches, said Danielle Manning, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

And so, as French Quarter tourists in ponchos set out tentatively in a light drizzle Saturday for sightseeing and barhopping, Baton Rouge residents wondered if they were in for a tragic repeat of 2016.

In the neighborhood of Comite Hills, just outside Baton Rouge, Karl and Stephanie Will worked to elevate anything in their home stored lower than 3 feet off the floor. The 2016 flood, they said, brought 2 1/2 feet of water in. They gutted everything to the ceiling and just finished their repairs in December.

Now it looked like everything could be ruined again. And there was nothing to do but wait for the river to rise. “Just waiting is the hardest part,” said Stephanie Will, 53.

The storm came ashore near Intracoastal City, Louisiana, a low-lying industrial town in Vermilion Parish, south of Lafayette. Becky Broussard, the parish’s homeland security director, said that the lone road leading to the town had flooded but that her office had not received any calls about structural damage so far. She estimated that around 75 people live in Intracoastal City, which was under a voluntary evacuation.

The storm moved north and west, with maximum sustained winds of 65 mph. It was expected to plow through the state toward the Arkansas border.

The storm was originally expected to make landfall around Morgan City, Louisiana. A near citywide blackout there prompted officials to shut down the faltering electrical system to make repairs, meaning that the power would stay off through the storm.

Still, the 30 inches of rain that the mayor, Frank Grizzaffi, had been expecting turned out to be much less. More rain was still to come, but by midday Grizzaffi was in better spirits. “Things are pretty good here,” he said. “For the most part, we’re holding up.”

Elsewhere there was trouble. More than 121,000 people were without power in Louisiana as of Saturday afternoon, according to the state’s largest energy companies.

In Plaquemines Parish, down the road from New Orleans, officials said earthen levees along Highway 23 and cow pastures had overtopped in spots, sending water into the sparsely populated Myrtle Grove and Point Celeste communities. A parish spokeswoman there said the levees had not been breached, although the parish president, Kirk Lenin, said the highway eventually “could become impassable.”

In rural Terrebonne Parish, a small levee that overtopped prompted officials there to order a mandatory evacuation for about 330 residents in the parish’s lowest reaches Saturday afternoon. The U.S. Coast Guard rescued about a dozen people by helicopter Saturday morning from Isle de Jean Charles, a community of about two dozen people outside the area’s flood protection system, said Mart Black, a Terrebonne Parish official.

Strong gusts of wind and steady rain began to whip Lafayette by the afternoon, although it remained, for the moment, flood-free. The real test was to start around 7 p.m., when the system was expected to pass over Lafayette, said the city’s mayor-president, Joel Robideaux. How bad things could get remained the “million-dollar question,” he said.

In New Orleans this past week, many had feared that the storm would deluge an already-engorged Mississippi River, straining the multibillion-dollar flood protection system put in place since Hurricane Katrina struck 14 summers ago. But some of those fears were assuaged Saturday when officials said that the river was predicted to crest at 17.1 feet by Monday — about 2 feet lower than earlier estimates. Although flood stage for the city is at 17 feet, most of the fortresslike levees and flood walls are at least 20 feet high.

New Orleans officials had advised most residents to shelter in place rather than leave town. A rainstorm earlier in the week caused extensive street flooding, ruining cars and stranding motorists. That raised questions about the efficacy of the city’s century-old pumping system, revamped since Katrina but often subject to power failures and other glitches.

While officials at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said their $20 billion post-Katrina flood protection system would protect the city, faith in the corps remains shallow among many residents who blame the agency for engineering flaws that contributed to the catastrophe in 2005.

There was also concern that the Louisiana coast was entering a new era of challenges in a changing climate. Although linking any individual weather event to climate change requires extensive scientific analysis, Barry and the trouble it is causing carry the hallmarks of a warming planet’s influence on weather events.

While the Gulf Coast has always had hurricanes, the extreme rain associated with this storm fits into emerging scientific research that suggests that climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of storms with heavy rainfall.

New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell said Saturday that flooding was still a threat and warned people to not get comfortable. “We are not out of the conditions that will cause heavy rainfall for the city of New Orleans,” she said.

But some worry had already begun to drain out of the city. On Saturday afternoon in the historic Faubourg Marigny neighborhood, Ben Speight, an employee of a mule-drawn carriage company, sauntered up to a resident, Christopher Stanton, who was sitting on his stoop.

“You think it’s going to do anything?” Speight said, referring to the storm.

“Oh, I don’t know,” replied Stanton, 70. “Maybe a little bit of something.”

Stanton, a retired respiratory therapist, had seen a house in New Orleans East destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, but this place on Pauger Street was his family’s ancestral home. There was no place he knew better. And he said he was increasingly worried. “Since the last so many years, I’ve seen more flooding than I ever have before. It didn’t used to be like that,” he said.

He showed a cellphone video of floodwaters on Pauger Street just last Wednesday. It had come up to the first step of his stoop. Climate change could be the culprit, he said. “But it could also be that the pumps are so old that they’re not working as well.”

Barry had already collided with plans for the weekend. Officials confirmed that federal immigration raids that were expected this weekend would not take place in New Orleans because of the storm. Flights to and from Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport were canceled. The Rolling Stones pushed a Superdome concert originally scheduled for Sunday back to Monday.

At the Will family’s painstakingly restored home outside Baton Rouge, a large red storage unit in the driveway contained belongings that had still not been brought back into the house since the 2016 flood. The couple runs a cake-making business from home, and the storage unit was stuffed with cookbooks. Stephanie Will said she expected the storage unit to flood, too, if the river gets as high as its forecast.

If their home did flood again, the couple said, they might start over and fix it up again — “or sell everything,” Karl Will said, half-joking, “and move to the desert where it doesn’t rain.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/13/us/13barry.html" link="null" target="_blank">The New York Times</a>.

Slow, Misshapen and Erratic, the Storm Comes Ashore

After a brief life as a Category 1 hurricane, Barry was downgraded to a tropical storm as it made landfall and continued to weaken. But the threat of flooding brought on by the storm’s incessant rain remained high, particularly in and around Baton Rouge, as the system churned north.

Slow, misshapen and erratic, the storm comes ashore

“This is just the beginning,” Gov. John Bel Edwards of Louisiana said at a midafternoon news conference. “I ask everyone to stay vigilant and be safe. This has always been projected to be a rain-flood event and it will be.”

In a late-evening news conference, Edwards said the crests of the rivers would be somewhat lower than anticipated. “However, I should point out that even the revised crest heights qualify as major flooding and present serious threats to life and property.”

And so, as French Quarter tourists in ponchos set out tentatively in a light drizzle Saturday afternoon for sightseeing and barhopping, Baton Rouge residents wondered if they were in for a tragic repeat of 2016.

Strong gusts of wind and steady rain began to whip Lafayette by the afternoon, although it remained, for the moment, flood-free. The real test would start around 7 p.m., when the system was expected to pass over Lafayette, said the city’s mayor-president, Joel Robideaux. How bad things could get remained the “million-dollar question,” he said.

By evening, though, the National Weather Service said that heavy rain was expected in New Orleans, issuing tornado and flash flood warnings for the city.

While the Gulf Coast has always had hurricanes, the extreme rain associated with this storm, originally projected to be anywhere from 10 to 20 inches, or even more, fits into emerging scientific research that suggests that climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of storms with heavy rainfall.

Hurricane Barry Spares New Orleans (So Far), as Inland Cities Brace for Floods

NEW ORLEANS — Hurricane Barry crept onto the shores of Louisiana west of flood-weary New Orleans on Saturday, drawing cautious optimism from city residents who saw little rainfall from the storm as of evening, and from officials in western coastal parishes that were drenched and battered but had prepared for much worse.

Hurricane Barry spares new Orleans (so far), as inland cities brace for floods

The governor said that officials were closely watching the Amite and Comite rivers. These rain-swollen waterways contributed to the catastrophic flooding in and around Baton Rouge in August 2016 that killed 13 people and displaced tens of thousands.

New Orleans may receive only 2 to 4 inches of rain through Monday morning, while the Baton Rouge area could see an additional 6 to 10 inches, said Danielle Manning, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

The storm came ashore near Intracoastal City, Louisiana, a low-lying industrial town in Vermilion Parish, south of Lafayette. The storm moved north and west, with maximum sustained winds of 65 mph. It was expected to plow through the state toward the Arkansas border.

More than 121,000 people were without power in Louisiana as of Saturday afternoon, according to the state’s largest energy companies.

In New Orleans this past week, many had feared that the storm would deluge an already-engorged Mississippi River, straining the multibillion-dollar flood protection system put in place since Hurricane Katrina struck 14 summers ago. But some of those fears were assuaged Saturday, when officials said that the river was predicted to crest at 17.1 feet by Monday — about 2 feet lower than earlier estimates. Although flood stage for the city is at 17 feet, most of the fortresslike levees and flood walls are at least 20 feet high.

The first major storm system to strike the United States this hurricane season, Barry had a brief life as a hurricane before being downgraded back to a tropical storm. It inched erratically through the communities west of New Orleans and near Lafayette, a misshapen brute that appeared to have trouble getting organized before staggering into the Louisiana wetlands. Residents braced for life-threatening storm surges, ripping winds and days of potential flooding to a wide swath of the Gulf Coast and areas farther inland.

Maximum sustained wind speeds reached about 75 mph, just above the threshold for a Category 1 hurricane, before weakening as the storm made landfall. But rain, not wind, was what made residents nervous. Barry was expected to bring 10 to 20 inches of rain over southern Louisiana and southwest Mississippi through the weekend, with some areas possibly getting up to 25 inches.

The dangers were evident even before the storm made landfall. The U.S. Coast Guard rescued 13 people by helicopter Saturday from Isle de Jean Charles, a community of about two dozen people outside the area’s flood protection system, said Mart Black, a spokesman for the Terrebonne Parish Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness.

A voluntary evacuation order had been issued for the island, Black said, but by morning, the only road leading onto the island was covered with water. Four of the 13 people who were rescued were elderly, he said.

Petty Officer Lexie Preston, a spokeswoman for the Coast Guard, said the rescue effort continued through the day as more calls for help came from the island.

In New Orleans, fears that the storm could dump more water on an already-engorged Mississippi River, straining the multibillion-dollar flood protection system put in place since Hurricane Katrina struck 14 summers ago, subsided slightly. The river was predicted to crest at 17.1 feet by Monday. Though flood stage for the city is 17 feet, most of the fortresslike levees and flood walls are at least 20 feet high.

The storm had been expected to make landfall near Morgan City, Louisiana, but ended up hitting closer to Intracoastal City, about 80 miles west. But David Naquin, homeland security director for St. Mary Parish, which includes Morgan City, said that was little consolation for him, as the eastern side of a storm often packs the most wallop.

“It’s actually worse for us,” he said. “It just puts us in the bull’s-eye of all the rain.”

Heavy rains and winds buffeted the city throughout the day, damaging buildings, downing trees and cutting much of the power. But there were no immediate reports of deaths or major injuries.

In New Orleans, officials had advised most residents to shelter in place rather than leave town. A rainstorm earlier in the week caused extensive street flooding, smashing cars and stranding motorists. And while officials at the Army Corps of Engineers said their $20 billion post-Katrina flood protection system would protect the city, faith in the corps remains shallow among many residents who blame the agency for engineering flaws that contributed to the catastrophe in 2005.

Levees overtopped in Terrebonne Parish, west of New Orleans, and in Plaquemines Parish, to the southeast, though officials said that the impacts, as of Saturday afternoon, were limited to flooded roads and highways nearby.

Warming atmosphere can hold more moisture, and dump it out in heavy downpours — a phenomenon seen not just in the case of storms like Barry but also in the record floods across much of the Midwest this year. Those floodwaters have traveled down the Mississippi River and have kept the river at flood stage at many points for the longest period in the history of accurate records.

If the river levees hold, the rain from Barry alone could prove to be one of the most challenging tests of the complex pumping system designed to clear the streets of floodwaters. After Katrina, the Army Corps upgraded pumping stations with elevated backup generators that have their own giant tanks of diesel fuel, enough to get through a long power failure, and safe houses for workers to weather the storms. (Conditions for pumping-station workers during Katrina were, by comparison, nightmarish.)

Gwendolyn Adams, a retired elementary schoolteacher, said she had fled to Mississippi during Hurricane Katrina and returned to find her home in ruins. What worries her now is not the threat of heavy rain flooding streets, she said, but the question of whether the levees will work. Still, she said she was going to stay put in her house in the city’s Lower 9th Ward this weekend.

“I figure it this way,” she said. “If something is for me, it’s going to happen no matter where I am. If I’m supposed to flood, and I’m at the top of a mountain, it’s going to get to me.”

Barry collided with plans throughout the city and the region. New Orleans officials confirmed that federal immigration raids planned for other major cities this weekend would not take place in the area because of the storm. Most flights to and from Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport were canceled. The Rolling Stones pushed a Superdome concert originally scheduled for Sunday back to Monday.

Residents of Baton Rouge, Louisiana’s inland capital city, were also watching carefully — thousands of homes were submerged under water in the area in August 2016 because of extended summer rains.

Bishop Michael Gerard Duca of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Baton Rouge announced online that faithful Catholics who felt that a trip to Sunday services would put them in danger “are dispensed from the obligation to attend Mass.”

“We pray through the intercession of Our Lady of Prompt Succor that all people of the dioceses get through this emergency situation without personal harm or severe damage to property,” he wrote.

NEW ORLEANS — Tropical Storm Barry roared ashore in southern Louisiana on Saturday, causing widespread power failures, more than a dozen emergency rescues and pounding rainfall in some communities.

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Richard Fausset, Emily Lane and Beau Evans

Articles written by the author

Slow, misshapen and erratic, the storm comes ashore

Hurricane Barry spares new Orleans (so far), as inland cities brace for floods

Slow, misshapen and erratic, the storm comes ashore

Slow, misshapen and erratic, the storm comes ashore