When was the last time you saw a cover like that on a news magazine?

On 23 August, 2005, the remnants of Tropical Depression Ten collided with a tropical wave over the Bahamas forming Tropical Depression Twelve. The next morning the system was upgraded to a Tropical Storm. The US National Hurricane Center began tracking it with the name Katrina.

On the morning of 25 August, it was upgraded to a Category 1 hurricane (Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale) as it crossed Florida. As it crossed the Loop Current of the Gulf of Mexico it increased to Category 3.

On the morning of 28 August, Katrina was declared a Category 5 hurricane on a scale that goes no higher.

By the time Katrina made its second landfall (on the Louisiana coast), on the morning of 29 August, it had weakened to Category 3.

The Category 5 hurricane had missed New Orleans. That city, and a swath of the Gulf Coast, was devastated by a hurricane that was not "The Big One".


If "The Big One" does hit Louisiana, or even if another Category 3 or perhaps even a Category 2 hurricane makes landfall there, New Orleans, which is still trying to recover from both nature's effects and human incompetence, will not survive. Not if they keep repeating the mistakes that devastated that city the first time.

Read on.

For a take on the cover picture of TIME, take a look at BAG.