Hurricane Katrina flogged Louisiana's southeastern shore Monday morning with sustained winds in excess of 135 mph as it moved inland, the National Hurricane Center said.
New Orleans, braced for a catastrophic direct hit from the powerful Category 4 storm, hunkered nearly 10,000 people in its mammoth Superdome, but Ed Reams of CNN affiliate WDSU reported that the structure has begun leaking as the winds damaged the roof letting daylight and rainwater in the darkened arena.
Hurricane Katrina made landfall Monday between Grand Isle, Louisiana, and the mouth of the Mississippi River -- and the worst is yet to come, National Hurricane Center forecaster Richard Knabb told CNN.
Katrina jogged to the north in the night, early enough to push the massive storm just off what had been a direct line to New Orleans, moving its eastern eye wall instead toward Biloxi and Gulfport, Mississippi, where CNN's Gary Tuchman found a boat washed onto a normally busy street.
"This is not the strongest part of the hurricane yet," Tuchman reported, battling the wind outside his truck. "This is the street where this boat is now. It's completely flooded. It's only going to get worse."
The counterclockwise spin of a hurricane makes the worst damage on its eastern edge, but CNN meteorologist Chad Myers cautioned that "there's not really an easy side of a Category 4 storm" on the Saffir-Simpson scale.
The Hurricane Center said that a 113 mph wind gust was reported in Pascagoula, Mississippi. (Watch video report from Biloxi, Mississippi)
In Biloxi, CNN meteorologist Rob Marciano reported that wind gusts topping 100 mph were starting to pull the roofs off of nearby buildings.
Probably the best place to learn how to help out those that become victims to a storm like this is The American Red Cross
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