Earth and Environment Atlas

How The Planet Works
Phenomena

Hurricane Katrina

Tropical Cyclone

Citation Formats

General Reference

APA Style

BibTeX

An extremely powerful tropical cyclone that struck the southeastern United States in late August 2005, most devastatingly around New Orleans, becoming the costliest tropical cyclone in United States history at about 125 billion dollars in damage. It peaked as a Category 5 hurricane before weakening to a Category 3 at its final landfall near the Louisiana-Mississippi border, and most of its deaths were caused by flooding from engineering failures in the federally built levee system protecting New Orleans, about 80 percent of which flooded.

Facts
Event Date
2005-08-29 1
Final United States landfall date; the storm formed 23 August and dissipated 31 August 2005.
Magnitude or Scale
Peaked as a Category 5 hurricane with winds of 175 mph; made final landfall as a Category 3 1
Death Toll
1,392, per the 2023 update, the deadliest United States hurricane since 1928 1
Location
Southeastern United States, most destructively New Orleans, Louisiana 1
Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

Peaked as a Category 5 hurricane with sustained winds of 175 miles per hour and made its final Gulf Coast landfall as a Category 3.

In Discipline

Sources
1. Hurricane Katrina (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia FoundationLead section
Quote, Lead section
Early on August 28, Katrina peaked as a Category 5 hurricane, with winds of 175 mph (280 km/h) and a minimum central pressure of 902 mbar (26.64 inHg).
View the Source
Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia FoundationAssociated With: Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind ScaleView the Source
Comments (0)
No comments yet. Be the first to share a thought.
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.

View At A Past Year

The atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.