Today is the anniversary of Hurricane Rita, who, fourteen years ago, made landfall in southwest Louisiana. The storm often is overshadowed by Hurricane Katrina, which made landfall about four weeks earlier, But state climatologist Barry Keim says Rita was a Category 5 storm in the Gulf.
“Just before making landfall near Johnson’s Bayou in Cameron Parish, the storm weakened down to a category 3 with sustained winds of 115 miles per hour, but it was still packing quite a punch,” said Keim.
Keim says Rita produced a storm surge of 17.8 feet, which made it the second-highest storm surge measured in Louisiana in over a century.
“It was second only to Hurricane Katrina, which had a storm surge of 18.7 feet in St. Bernard Parish,” said Keim.
Keim says 95% of homes and businesses in Cameron Parish were destroyed and combined with the damage sustained by Hurricane Katrina in the weeks earlier, much of the Louisiana coastline was left devastated.
“We’re still in recovery mode fourteen years later," Keim said. "If you go into these communities, they are just not the same. Clearly, these events were transformational for the state of Louisiana.”