[Quilla]

Interesting and informative post; however, I'm not quite following your time line. I believe NO officials had even more warning than you imply. Please note the following graphic that backhoe has posted on several threads:

Granted, Katrina had not yet built up to a Cat 3 at this point (Friday night), it does appear she was making a beeline to NO.

[jonrick46]

That graphic from backhoe with the dates and times is an item I have searched long and hard for. I wonder where backhoe got it? Below is the timeline that I have found. The timeline I received was in Greenwich Mean Time. To convert the times to Central Daylight Time which corresponds to the time for New Orleans, I subtracted 5 hours from the GMT. Here is my results:

4:00 PM CDT 08/23/05 23.2N 75.5W 35 MPH 1007 mb Tropical Depr.

10:00 PM CDT 08/23/05 23.4N 76.0W 35 MPH 1007 mb Tropical Depr.

4:00 AM CDT 08/24/05 24.0N 76.4W 35 MPH 1006 mb Tropical Dep.

10:00 AM CDT 08/24/05 24.7N 76.7W 40 MPH 1006 mb Tropical Storm

4:00 PM CDT 08/24/05 25.6N 77.2W 45 MPH 1002 mb Tropical Storm

10:00 PM CDT 08/24/05 26.0N 78.0W 50 MPH 1001 mb Tropical Storm

4:00 AM CDT 08/25/05 26.2N 78.7W 50 MPH 1000 mb Tropical Storm

10:00 AM CDT 08/25/05 26.2N 79.3W 60 MPH 997 mb Tropical Storm

4:00 PM CDT 08/25/05 26.1N 79.9W 75 MPH 985 mb Category1

10:00 PM CDT 08/25/05 25.5N 80.7W 75 MPH 984 mb Category 1

4:00 AM CDT 08/26/05 25.3N 81.5W 75 MPH 987 mb Category 1

10:00 AM CDT 08/26/05 25.1N 82.2W 75 MPH 981 mb Category 1

10:00 AM CDT 08/26/05 25.1N 82.2W 80 MPH 981 mb Category 1

10:00 AM CDT 08/26/05 25.1N 82.2W 100 MPH 971 mb Category 2

4:00 PM CDT 08/26/05 24.8N 82.9W 100 MPH 965 mb Category 2

10:00 PM CDT 08/26/05 24.6N 83.6W 105 MPH 965 mb Category 2

4:00 AM CDT 08/27/05 24.4N 84.4W 115 MPH 945 mb Category 3

10:00 AM CDT 08/27/05 24.5N 85.0W 115 MPH 940 mb Category 3

4:00 PM CDT 08/27/05 24.6N 85.6W 115 MPH 945 mb Category 3

10:00 PM CDT 08/27/05 25.0N 86.2W 115 MPH 939 mb Category 3

1:00 AM CDT 08/28/05 25.1N 86.8W 145 MPH 935 mb Category 4

4:00 AM CDT 08/28/05 25.4N 87.4W 145 MPH 935 mb Category 4

7:00 AM CDT08/28/05 25.7N 87.7W 160 MPH 908 mb Category 5

10:00 AM CDT 08/28/05 26.0N 88.1W 175 MPH 907 mb Category 5

4:00 PM CDT 08/28/05 26.9N 89.0W 165 MPH 902 mb Category 5

10:00 PM CDT 08/28/05 27.6N 89.4W 160 MPH 904 mb Category 5

4:00 AM CDT 08/29/05 28.8N 89.6W 150 MPH 915 mb Category 4

10:00 AM CDT 08/29/05 30.2N 89.6W 125 MPH 927 mb Category 3

4:00 PM CDT 08/29/05 31.9N 89.6W 75 MPH 960 mb Category 1

10:00 PM CDT 08/29/05 33.5N 88.5W 60 MPH 973 mb Tropical Storm

4:00 AM CDT 08/30/05 34.7N 88.4W 50 MPH 981 mb Tropical Storm

10:00 AM CDT 08/30/05 36.3N 87.5W 35 MPH 985 mb Tropical Depr.

I know it is hard to find anything to correlate the trajectory with the time line. I wish that were more forthcoming. I do want to emphasize that the behavior of Katrina did not act like other hurricanes. Most of them would have turned north upon landfall in Florida. This is why many lost interest in Katrina once it fell to a tropical storm after it ran through Miami Thursday evening, August 25th. The time line above does not reflect that Katrina fell off in intensity about 2:00 AM to a Tropical Storm. As soon as she entered the Gulf, Katrina reconstituted as a Category 1 Hurricane. Not only did Katrina fail to follow the usual course of hurricanes, it hit the 90 degree waters of the Gulf and, as you will see above, went from a Category 1 to a Category 5 in two days. If you were making decisions based upon this hurricane's behavior, you would be making a terrible error. By all appearances, it gave a false sense of security as it went on its westerly course. Only if one heeded the predictions from the weather scientists would the danger be realized. Because this fatal mistake was made, the window of opportunity to take action became very short. The call for a mandatory evacuation was made when the planning for transportation for those without cars was not made. That was the worst timing for such a call because it was a Sunday and getting the buses lined up with drivers and loaded with fuel had to be done quickly. Also, the location to take the evacuees had to be arraigned. The window of opportunity was closing quickly August 28th, and by then, Katrina had New Orleans dead in its sights. The call should have been the day Katrina entered the Gulf on August 26th, two days earlier.

The same failure to pay attention to weather predictions was the same failure to pay attention to predictions about how the failure of the levy system during a hurricane would totally destroy New Orleans. That failure, when the window of opportunity was at least ten years, says something about the system of broken trust that became entrenched in the leadership of this region. It is that failure that is unforgivable.