Twenty years ago this morning I was handling the weather for the CBS Early Show from Miami. We were carefully watching as Katrina made landfall in southeastern Louisiana and southern Mississippi. Up until 9:15 AM ET / 8:15 AM CT, we had been cautiously optimistic that the levees and flood walls protecting New Orleans were going to hold up well enough to avoid a disaster, but we were very concerned for the Mississippi coast.

Just 36 years earlier, Hurricane Camille had produced unimaginable storm surge that devastated the towns along the Mississippi Gulf coast. No one thought that a storm could be worse than that, and then Katrina happened. The storm surge forecasts were quite accurate that Monday morning, but unbelievable. The water was forecast to rise as high as 28 feet above the normal

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