Hurricane Sally: 'Historic flooding' could threaten Gulf Coast as storm prepares to make landfall

Hurricane Sally made an eastward shift in the Gulf of Mexico and is expected to make landfall as a powerful category 1 storm on the Mississippi and Alabama coasts and Florida panhandle, with the potential for “historic flooding" and “extreme life-threatening” flash floods through Wednesday.

The slow-moving storm’s lurch to the east has moved Louisiana out of a hurricane warning. The New Orleans metro area is now under a tropical storm warning, and a flash flood watch for the region has been cancelled.

Initially forecast to make landfall on Tuesday morning, the slow-crawling system – moving at just 2mph – could hover over the region for up to 12 hours after it hits the coast, according to the National Weather Service.

Sally’s maximum sustained winds have reached 85pmh, with stronger gusts.

“Although little change in strength is forecast until landfall occurs, Sally is still expected to be a dangerous hurricane when it moves onshore along the north-central Gulf coast,” the agency reported.

The storm could dump up to 20 inches of rain with isolated pockets of 30 inches from the central Gulf Coast to the western end of the Florida panhandle, the agency announced in its latest forecast.

Sally’s arrival marks the second time in recorded history that the Atlantic Ocean has produced five tropical cyclones simultaneously, on the heels of Hurricane Laura’s devastation in southwest Louisiana at the end of August.

Gulf Coast residents are beginning to feel tropical storm-like conditions, and hurricane-force winds could begin whipping the coast on Tuesday night, as the storm makes landfall on late Tuesday or early Wednesday.

Hurricane warnings are in effect for areas east of the mouth of Pearl River in Mississippi to Navarre, Florida. Sally could push life-threatening storm surges, with rising waters moving inland from the coast, into impacted areas.

The storm is expected to continue on a northeastern track on Wednesday as it gradually dissipates into a depression into northern Alabama and Georgia by early Friday morning.