New Delhi, Wednesday, August 29, Hurricane Isaac that made a landfall along the extreme southeastern Louisiana coast on Tuesday evening is about to pound the northern Gulf Coast with storm surge flooding, heavy rainfalls, strong winds and possible isolated tornadoes. The situation would arise as Isaac will continue to move very slowly near the Louisiana coast throughout Wednesday.
The eastern and the southern Louisiana as well as the southern Mississippi will be in the epicenter of the heaviest rainfall. The heavy rainfall will pose an even bigger danger near the coast of southeast Louisiana and southern Mississippi, where coastal flooding will potentially persist through Thursday as there is simply no place for all this rainwater to drain.
The rainfall from Hurricane Isaac will not only soak the South. The remnants of Isaac may make the weekend soggy in the Midwest as well. A similar Hurricane Ike made landfall along the upper Texas coast in September 2008. After moving inland across east Texas, the remnants turned northeastward in the direction of the Midwest and delivered a stripe of rainfall from Arkansas and Missouri to Michigan.
The remnants of Isaac are predicted to move on a similar arcing path from out of Louisiana northwestward to perhaps as far west as east Oklahoma and east Kansas before turning northeastward across the middle-Mississippi Valley, Ohio Valley and the south of Great Lakes Friday through Sunday.
Where the exact swath of heaviest rain eventually falls is uncertain, but it's expected that some of the drought areas in the Midwest will get some much needed showers. Will it be a widespread drought buster? The short answer is no. But, the beneficial rains will just soak a small portion of a large and intense drought area.
