Hurricane Zeta Makes Landfall: Live Updates
Hurricane Zeta is the latest storm in a busy season for the Gulf Coast.
Hurricane Zeta, a powerful Category 2 storm, made landfall Wednesday afternoon on southeastern Louisiana, where it was expected to bring heavy rains and damaging winds to a state that has been repeatedly clobbered by hurricanes this season.
Zeta is the fifth named storm to strike the state this year with about a month left in the hurricane season. The prior record of four was set in 2002, said Philip Klotzbach, a research scientist at Colorado State University.
Zeta made landfall near Cocodrie, La., and was about 65 miles south-southwest of New Orleans at 4 p.m. Central time. The storm was moving at 24 miles per hour with maximum sustained winds of 110 miles per hour.
A hurricane warning was in effect Wednesday morning for a stretch of coast from Morgan City, La., to the Mississippi-Alabama border and the metropolitan New Orleans area.
The storm was expected to make a second landfall along the Mississippi coast on Wednesday evening, then move across the Southeastern and Eastern United States on Thursday, dumping up to six inches of rain in some locations.
The city of New Orleans sent regular warnings to residents via text message Wednesday. And officials took a variety of precautions in anticipation of a deluge.
The Lower Mississippi River closed to vessels at 2 a.m. Wednesday; the Port of New Orleans was also closed. Flood-protection crews were closing the gates that prevent storm surge from entering the city’s network of drainage canals. City buses stopped running at noon.
Since the heavier rains were expected to begin in early afternoon, many offices and stores also shut down at noon. As a result, grocery store checkout lines were lengthy Wednesday morning as people bought bread, canned goods, and meat to put on a gas grill, all of which can be eaten during a power outage. Shoppers also stocked up on bottled water — essential in case the drinking water system loses power.
Many residents who live near the Gulf of Mexico in areas unprotected by levees headed to higher ground on Wednesday; other stalwarts who live in raised houses planned to weather the storm within their homes, knowing that the storm surge likely will push several feet of water into their streets and communities before the water recedes on Thursday.
On Wednesday morning, as a light rain fell, Ze’ Daluz, 65, stood outside her neighbor’s house in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward discussing what was expected with this fast-moving storm and the city’s drainage system.
“We’re supposed to get about four to six inches of rain, but within a few hours, so we know that will overwhelm the pumps. We’ll have street flooding for sure,” Ms. Daluz said. She planned to make a big batch of stewed okra and shrimp on her gas stove, which will work even if power fails.
Early voting will be temporarily halted in some parts of Florida.
As Hurricane Zeta took aim at parts of Louisiana and Florida’s Panhandle on Wednesday, election officials in Florida planned to close some early voting centers to prepare for the storm.
Louisiana, meanwhile, ended its 10 days of early voting on Tuesday, just ahead of the storm’s arrival, with total early voting numbers much higher than in the 2016 election, said John Couvillon, a pollster in Baton Rouge who studies voter turnout. More than 960,000 people voted early in Louisiana, up from more than 530,000 in 2016.
Officials in New Orleans are now discussing alternative polling locations if expected power outages continue into next week, the city’s mayor, LaToya Cantrell, said. More than 90,000 people in the city voted early.
“We want to keep those lines and the accessibility right there for our folks to exercise their right and, of course, let their voices be heard,” Ms. Cantrell said at a news conference Wednesday.
In a news conference on Wednesday, Gov. John Bel Edwards of Louisiana said power restoration efforts will be prioritized where there are polling locations.
The U.S. Postal Service said Wednesday that there have been some temporary closures of post office locations and suspensions of operations in Louisiana.
Other mail collection boxes in the Gulf Coast area may also be temporarily inaccessible, including in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.
Early voting sites for thousands in staunchly Republican areas in Florida’s Panhandle — Escambia, Santa Rosa and Okaloosa Counties — will close early Wednesday. Officials intend to reopen Thursday morning to secure the sites and assess any damage.
Florida is a key battleground state that is diverse but leans conservative. In Santa Rosa County alone, more than 73 percent of the county’s almost 90,000 ballots were cast were for President Trump in 2016.
Elections officials in Santa Rosa and Okaloosa Counties said that they had already exceeded the state’s expectations for early voting, including extra days and hours than the minimum required by state laws.
“We’ve offered above and beyond what the statute requires,” said Tappie Villane, the supervisor of elections of Santa Rosa County. “Voters have had ample opportunity if they want to early vote.”
Alabama, too, is expected to feel some of the impact from the storm — but officials do not expect effects on voting. Although the state does not offer early voting at precincts, it does offer absentee ballots that can be mailed or dropped off to county absentee election managers, said John Merrill, the secretary of state. More than 240,000 absentee ballots have been returned, beating the previous record of 89,000 ballots, Mr. Merrill said.
Officials in Alabama will not begin opening ballots to tabulate results until Election Day, so tabulation delays from the storm are unlikely. “We want to be prepared, but in our preparation, we’re going to make sure we follow the law,” Mr. Merrill said.
Local officials are urging people to prepare. But will they?
Zeta, which hit the northern Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico on Monday and Tuesday, is the 11th hurricane and 27th named storm in an Atlantic cyclone season so busy that forecasters have run through the alphabet of names and are now working their way through Greek letters.
The northern Gulf Coast region has been fatigued by repeated storms — Cristobal in June, Laura and Marco in August, Sally and Beta in September, and Delta this month. Yet before they made landfall, the storms swerved to the east or west, scraping New Orleans with just a glancing blow.
Gov. John Bel Edwards of Louisiana had declared a state of emergency and said Tuesday night that President Trump had approved the state’s request for a Federal Emergency Declaration. “Though we don’t know exactly what #Zeta will bring, we know this will be a big help in the recovery process for those communities that will feel” the storm’s impact, he said.
While some residents sprang into action, preparing their property and bracing for whatever the storm may bring, others didn’t appear distressed.
“I’m over it, really,” Glen David Andrews, a trombonist, said during a break in a gig at Café du Monde in the French Quarter of New Orleans. He was not planning to put much effort into preparing for the storm. “I’m going to charge up my devices,” he said, “and then sit back to enjoy the wind as this 24-hour storm blows through the city.”
In Plaquemines Parish, which lies directly on the Gulf of Mexico, southeast of New Orleans, Byron Encalade said he could not afford to be cavalier about hurricanes. “Any storm, I care about,” said Mr. Encalade, 66, who remembered riding out storms as a child in the parish courthouse.
Zeta could mean trouble for birds, too.
Because Louisiana sits at a crucial junction within the Mississippi Flyway, which stretches from the Arctic to South America, late-season hurricanes can delay or cause detours for birds heading to warmer climes.
In other words, Zeta may be bad news for wildlife.
As the hurricane blows through the Gulf of Mexico, it could slam into flocks of small warblers, vireos and indigo buntings, all of which are poised to cross the water at this time of year, said Erik Johnson, director of bird conservation with Audubon Louisiana.
“A storm could be devastating for a migratory songbird that fuels up just enough to make it across the Gulf,” Mr. Johnson said, noting that some flocks might also delay takeoff by a few more days in places like Louisiana’s Barataria Preserve, where migratory birds stop to eat hackberries and seeds before they take off for South America.
There are other wildlife concerns, too. In some national park wildlife areas, storm surge waters can temporarily push alligators closer to pathways and buildings. “Once the alligators go back home, we open back up,” noted Dave Barak, a National Park Service park ranger.
The storm hit Mexico earlier this week.
Zeta brought torrential rains when it slammed into the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico on Monday night. It was a Category 1 hurricane at the time, and downgraded to a tropical storm on Tuesday morning.
The storm had caused some power outages in at least two Mexican states and pushed sand onto roadways. The storm’s surf were so great that destroyed turtle eggs were found on Playa Ballenas.
Climate change is making hurricanes wetter.
The devastation this year has been attributed in part to a changing climate, which has made hurricanes wetter and slower. But climate scientists said the series of storms in Louisiana could also be blamed on simple bad luck.
“It’s kind of like flipping a coin and getting heads five times in a row — it happens,” said James P. Kossin, a researcher with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, adding that “it’s not that surprising” given the size of the Gulf and the randomness of weather factors.
Along the Gulf Coast, veterans of hurricanes tend to take Category 1 storms in stride. There was also the added advantage that late-season storms, like Zeta, typically move a lot faster than an early-season storm that can stall for 10 to 12 hours, overwhelming areas with winds and rain.
And in New Orleans, there is concern that low-level hurricanes can be more damaging than predicted. Even the weakest hurricanes can cause hardship or at least discomfort, as the wind and rain knock out electricity and damage buildings.
Any significant rainfall in the city is worrisome because of the city’s drainage system, a series of pumps that lift water out of the bowl-shaped city through power supplied partly by century-old turbines. On Sunday, the city’s Sewerage and Water Board announced that Turbine 4, one of the system’s largest, “unexpectedly went offline,” prompting concerns that water in low-lying areas of the city would be pumped out more slowly.
Reporting was contributed by Maria Cramer, Christina Morales, Katy Reckdahl, Rick Rojas, John Schwartz and Derrick Bryson Taylor.
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