(CBS/AP) KEY WEST, Fla. - Tropical Storm Isaac targeted a broad swath of the Gulf Coast on Monday and had New Orleans in its crosshairs, bearing down just ahead of the seventh anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.
The potential for a landfall as a Category 1 hurricane as soon as Tuesday prompted evacuations along a wide area of the Gulf Coast and sent people out to stock up on staples.
"I gassed up -- truck and generator," John Corll, 59, a carpenter, said as he left a New Orleans coffee shop Monday morning. He went through Katrina in 2005 and was expecting a weaker storm this time, adding that he thinks the levee system is in better shape to handle a storm surge than when Katrina hit. "I think the state and local governments are much better prepared for the storm surge and emergencies," Corll said.
The storm that left 10 dead in Haiti and the Dominican Republic blew past the Florida Keys with little damage, and rolled northwestward over the open Gulf of Mexico on Monday. The National Hurricane Center predicted it would grow to a hurricane over the warm water, with winds of between 74 and 95 mph. It is predicted to hit sometime Tuesday along a roughly 300-mile stretch of coastline, from the bayous southwest of New Orleans to the edge of the Florida Panhandle.
That would be one day shy of seven years after Katrina struck catastrophically in 2005, although Katrina was a much stronger Category 5 storm with winds above 157 miles per hour. Isaac is expected to have top winds of around 90 mph when it hits land.
But Isaac could pack a watery double punch: If it hits during high tide, floodwaters as deep as 12 feet could be pushed ashore in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, and up to six feet in the Florida Panhandle, as up to 18 inches of rain is dumped over the region, the National Weather Service warned.
At 11 a.m. EDT on Monday, Isaac remained a tropical storm with top sustained winds of 65 mph. Its center was about 310 miles southeast of the mouth of the Mississippi River, and it was moving northwest at 14 mph.
Seven years after Katrina, New Orleans braces for Isaac
The size of the warning area and the storm's wide bands of rain and wind prompted emergency declarations in four states, and hurricane-tested residents were boarding up homes, sticking up on food and water or getting ready to evacuate.
On the Alabama coast, Billy Cannon, 72, was preparing to evacuate -- with several cars packed with family and four Chihuahuas -- from a home on a peninsula in Gulf Shores. Canon, who has lived on the coast for 30 years, said he thinks the order to evacuate Monday was premature.
"If it comes in, it's just going to be a big rain storm. I think they overreacted but I understand where they're coming from. It's safety," he said.
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