New Orleans Next On Hurricane Hit List?

There's good agreement among computer forecasting
models that Nate will come ashore over or near
southeastern Louisiana, but the wild card is
how strong it will be when it gets there. 

The next American city to get slammed in this terrible hurricane season of 2017 might be New Orleans.

Hurricane watches are now up for this weekend along the Louisiana and Mississippi coasts, including the city of New Orleans as Tropical Storm Nate gets its act together in the western Caribbean Sea today.

It's inevitable that Nate will hit the United States somewhere along the Gulf Coast over the weekend, but there are big questions on the exact path and especially the strength of Nate once it reaches the U.S.

Maximum sustained winds with Nate were 45 mph early this morning, which isn't too intense, but the storm should strengthen fairly rapidly over very warm waters north of Nicaragua today.

Nate will head north, and how the storm interacts with land when it passes over or near Mexico's Yucatan peninsula tonight will greatly determine how fierce a storm Nate will be once it reaches the United States.

If the land interaction seriously disrupts Nate's core, it won't have time to get its act together and, in a best case scenario, not even get to full hurricane strength.  However, if Nate stays organized, or somehow misses the Yucatan altogether, it could strengthen rapidly into a dangerous powerhouse.

Hurricane forecasters are generally better at predicted a hurricane's path than they are at pinpointing its future strength. That's the nature of the science.

Right now, the National Hurricane Center is going with a middle of the road approach, and predicts a Category 1 Nate with 80 mph winds when it comes ashore.

After dealing with Category 4 and 5 hurricanes this year, Category 1 doesn't seem so bad, yet it is. Up to a foot of rain might fall along the Gulf Coast in the path of Nate, and storm surges will very likely batter the coastline.

The New Orleans water pumping system, which pushes water out of the low lying city during storms, is still not fully functional after a very damaging August 5 flood there. So more flooding is very possible.

One hopeful piece of news is that Nate will be moving right along, so it won't rain heavily in New Orleans or elsewhere for a long time. It won't be like Hurricane Harvey, which pretty much stalled out over East Texas for days, which, as we all remember, caused immense floods.