Ida gathered more strength overnight and made landfall near Port Fourchon, Louisiana, at 11.55am (local time), the National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.
It is the toughest test yet for the hundreds of miles of new levees built around New Orleans after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, which made landfall 16 years ago to the day, inundating historically Black neighborhoods and killing more than 1800 people.
