Lesson Learned? Gulf Coast Girds for Gustav

Sept. 1, 2008 -- Hurricane Gustav is over the Gulf of Mexico, churning into monster storm on a trajectory to hit the U.S. Gulf Coast, most likely as a powerful Category 3 hurricane. If it misses the battered city of New Orleans, it won't be by much.

Cuba took the brunt of the then-Category 4 storm as it washed over the island on Saturday before heading into the bathtub-warm waters of the Gulf, where it could still strengthen.

It's almost exactly three years since Hurricane Katrina made landfall over New Orleans and laid waste to the city. City Mayor Ray Nagan has ordered a mandatory evacuation, and residents have largely fled a city that's far from fully recovered from Katrina.

Thousands of "temporary" housing trailers provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency still dot the landscape. Only two-thirds of the original population has returned. Construction workers have been racing around the clock to buttress the levees and floodwalls that hold back the water of Lake Ponchartrain, the Mississippi River, and the Gulf of Mexico.

The storm is expected to make landfall west of New Orleans Monday evening, but the forecast is still somewhat uncertain.

"Beyond three days, forecasts for wind speed are very poor, they have no skill," Chris Landsea of the National Hurricane Center said, referring to the computer modeling results meteorologists use to predict storms. "It's not certain by any means that Gustav is going to come ashore in the U.S. as a major hurricane." That's looking more and more certain the longer Gustav spins over Gulf waters.

Location is similarly hard to predict. A ridge of high-pressure air over Florida is expected to break, allowing the storm to turn northward toward Louisiana. Officials report that it could still turn and strike anywhere between Houston, Texas, and Pensacola, Fla., a 500-mile long stretch of coast.

New Orleans may dodge a bullet, but is likely to experience at least tropical storm-force winds, according to reports.