FYI, in 2005 we had Hurricane Cindy just a month before Hurricane Katrina. It was not as devastating as Katrina, yet there was a lot of damage..

Hurricane Cindy formed in the Gulf of Mexico on July 4, 2005. Originally thought to be a tropical storm, Cindy made landfall in Louisiana on July 5, 2005 as a minimal hurricane, dropping up to five in (130 mm) of rain, spawning several tornadoes, flooding some coastal areas including Coden, Alabama, and killing three people. Cindy was upgraded to a hurricane in the post-storm analysis.


Hurricane Katrina formed in mid-August over the Bahamas. It became a tropical storm on August 24, 2005 and reached hurricane intensity before making landfall in south Florida as a minimal hurricane. A few hours later, the storm entered the Gulf of Mexico and intensified rapidly into a Category 5 hurricane while crossing the Loop Current on August 28. Katrina made landfall shortly after 06:00 CST on August 29, 2005 near the mouth of the Mississippi River as an extremely large Category 3 hurricane. Category 5-level storm surges (as the storm had weakened only in the previous several hours) caused catastrophic damage along the coastlines of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. Within hours, levees separating Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans, Louisiana were breached by the surge, ultimately flooding about 80% of the city.

EDIT** Actually the storm surge pushed the Gulf waters up the Mississippi Gulf Outlet (Mr.GO) , this mass amount of water is the cause of the levee breech. A man made disaster. For decades the civil engineers warned that the canal system was not made to be as deep as they had recently trenched it, their warnings fell on deaf ears, and we all know the outcome. The allure of fast money was far more important than the safety of the citizens and the city.
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