But the storm actually turned out to be much less powerful than predicted. Meteorologists say a puff of dry air coming out of the Midwest weakened Katrina just before it reached land, transforming a Category 5 monster into a less-threatening Category 3 storm.
The last-minute gust also pushed Katrina slightly to the east of its Big Easy-bound trajectory, sparing New Orleans a direct hit _ though not horrendous harm.
"It was kind of an amazing sequence of events," said Peter Black, a meteorologist at the Hurricane Research Division of the federal government's Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory.
I see Notre Dame de Prompte Secour all over it.