New Orleans gets roughly 1,600 mm (about 64 inches) of rain a year, among the highest totals of any major U.S. city, and much of it sits below sea level protected by an extensive levee and pumping system. That combination makes the city especially sensitive to both hurricane storm surge and the sheer volume of rain a tropical system can dump in a short window, a risk underscored by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Summer afternoons regularly bring intense, fast-building thunderstorms off the warm Gulf waters, and street flooding can happen well before a storm reaches hurricane strength. Because the pumping system has finite capacity, how quickly rain falls matters as much as how much falls, which is exactly what radar imagery shows in real time. Local forecasters lean on the region’s Doppler radar coverage to track storm bands as they move onshore and to give residents an early read on developing tropical systems.
Learn more: Hurricane Season Radar Guide · Open the full Rain Map