On Friday, this site as well as the rest of the country reflected on the third year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s landfall along the Gulf Coast. The storm holds the mark as the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history with some $80 billion dollars in damage while claiming some 1,833 lives. Now, in a bitter twist of irony, the same region is in the crosshairs again with a menacing storm named Gustav.

In a period of 39 hours, just more than a day and a half, Hurricane Gustav grew from a strong tropical storm to the fringes of Category Five intensity with 150 mile per hour winds. Thankfully, the storm moved over the Isle of Youth and Western Cuba, which put a halt to the momentum the storm had gained from its rapid intensification. Nevertheless, Gustav still has winds of 125 miles per hour, which still makes it a very formidable Category Three Hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Scale.

On top of that, the storm is back over water, and not just any body of water, but the very warm water of the Gulf of Mexico. Located approximately 425 miles from the Mouth of the Mississippi River, Hurricane Gustav has plenty of warm water real estate to cover before it comes ashore somewhere along the Central Gulf Coast. Presently, a Hurricane Warning is in effect from Cameron, Louisiana eastward to the Alabama/Florida border including the City of New Orleans and Lake Pontchartrain. A Hurricane Watch is in effect from west of Cameron, ground zero for such powerful storms as Hurricane Audrey back in 1957, westward to High Island, Texas. The storm is moving quite briskly to the Northwest at 16 miles per hour as of the 5 AM EDT Advisory on Sunday morning.

A large ridge of high pressure, which is supposed to usher in very nice weather for the Northeast this week, may be the saving grace for New Orleans. The Big Easy, which honestly is in now condition to have another major hurricane knocking down its doors, especially since the brunt of Katrina ended up well east of the city, and thanks to a man-made disaster, it lay in ruin. A major hurricane making landfall west of New Orleans would be the doomsday scenario everybody has dreaded for years. It could be the end of a major American metropolis much like what happened to Indianola, Texas back in the 1880s, and its rival city Galveston some 30 years later. It would be a very crippling blow to the Crescent City to say the least. Two things actually saved New Orleans in Katrina. The first was the already mentioned fact that the storm’s strongest part, the eastern semicircle was well to the east, and the second was the fact that Katrina had weakened significantly prior to landfall.

Cuba’s rugged terrain may have put a temporary halt to Gustav’s march on New Orleans. Could Gustav regain itself, and become the monster Katrina was some three years ago? Only time will tell.