How Would Social Impacts from Hurricane Ida in Louisiana Differ with a Westward Shifted Landfall?

Hurricane Ida made landfall as a category 4 hurricane in Port Fourchon, Louisiana on August 29th, 2021, resulting in two direct fatalities in Louisiana from wind. An additional twenty-six fatalities following the storm’s landfall were mostly caused by wind related impacts. Events such as Ida, show the widespread impacts produced by hurricanes, leaving many of Louisiana’s communities physically and socially vulnerable. Different socio-demographic groups receive weather information differently and some may have more difficulty accessing these sources. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to identify these communities, as they would need more assistance in future hurricanes. This project investigates the socio-demographic impacts from Ida due to variations in storm track within the typical range of 72-hour forecast position uncertainty. Since forecasting models showed a westward bias, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) modeled Hurricane Ida storm surge if it would have made landfall eastwards. Using the wind footprint model described by Done et al. (2020), Ida’s track was adjusted to simulate the spatial wind field associated with this change in landfall locations. Moreover, using maximum wind values at each census tract area, impacts were examined using various Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) variables from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Results from the wind track demonstrated that a more westward track would convey faster wind decay than the actual track. From the SVI variables, we observed more impacts from the actual track due to stronger winds and denser population areas.