How Hurricane Katrina unfolded, from a weather perspective

Twenty years ago, on Aug. 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina cemented itself in history as one of the deadliest and most devastating disasters to strike the United States. Katrina claimed the lives of 1,392 people, according to the National Hurricane Center, with most of the lives lost in Louisiana and Mississippi. This made Katrina the deadliest hurricane for the U.S. since the 1928 Okeechobee Hurricane. The storm caused more than $125 billion in damage across the Southeast U.S., making it the costliest hurricane in the nation's history before it was tied by Hurricane Harvey in 2017. Most of the damage was due to the levee and water pump failures in New Orleans, the historic storm surge in Mississippi and Katrina's expansive wind field. What would eventually become Hurricane Katrina began as a t