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 the hurricane would eventually make landfall—were first issued by the Weather Bureau on the morning of September 28 and disseminated via telegraph and mail. That afternoon, a hurricane warning was issued for coastal regions of the Gulf of Mexico from Pensacola, Florida to New Orleans, Louisiana. Extensive efforts to communicate the imminent threat the hurricane posed began in earnest following the issuance of warnings for the area, with public interests being advised that the approaching storm could be stronger than the 1909 Grand Isle hurricane, which served as New Orleans' strongest documented tropical cyclone at the time. Warnings continued into