Hurricane preparedness for New Orleans two months later. Hurricane Katrina threatened the city in August 2005. The eye of the huge storm grazed the eastern side of the city, sparing it from the worst of its power. However, due to poorly designed levees and the worst civil engineering failure in United States history, most of the city experienced flooding similar to a direct hit; see: Levee failures in Greater New Orleans, 2005. There were many predictions of hurricane risk in New Orleans before Katrina. On August 26 the storm, at one point up to a Category 5, was in the Gulf with a projection to
1915 New Orleans hurricane seas produced by the hurricane along the Louisiana coast arrived shortly before the storm made landfall. Evacuees departing the coast as late as September 28 reported no abnormal tides along the shore. However, sea levels began to rise at abnormally rapid rates on the morning of September 29 as the hurricane neared. By the afternoon hours, low-lying lands south of New Orleans and east towards Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, as well as areas adjacent to Lake Pontchartrain, were inundated by the quickly rising storm surge. Levee overtopping along Lake Pontchartrain resulted in the flooding of much of western New Orleans.