WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 30th August, 2021) Hurricane Ida has made landfall in the US state of Louisiana as a Category Four storm, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) said on Sunday.
"1155 AM CDT [16:55 GMT]: #Ida made landfall as an extremely dangerous category 4 hurricane near Port Fourchon, Louisiana, with maximum sustained winds of 150 mph [241 kilometers per hour] and a minimum central pressure of 930 mb (27.46 inches)," the NHC tweeted.
Notably, Ida hit the Gulf Coast on the 16th anniversary of disastrous Hurricane Katrina, the most powerful storm seen in Louisiana.
Some 167,816 households are left without power, according to the PowerOutage.US portal.
Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards warned on Saturday that Ida could become one of the strongest storms to hit the state since the 1850s. New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell has urged people to self-evacuate.
Katrina and subsequent floods are estimated to have claimed between 1,245 and 1,836 lives in 2005, resulting in a major environmental disaster in southern Louisiana.
