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Hurricane Katrina was the eleventh named tropical storm, fourth hurricane, third major hurricane, and first Category 5 hurricane of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season. It first made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane just north of Miami, Florida on August 25, 2005, then again on August 29 along the Central Gulf Coast near New Orleans, Louisiana, as a Category 4 storm. Katrina resulted in breaches of the levee system that protected New Orleans from Lake Pontchartrain, and most of the city was subsequently flooded by the lake's waters. This and other major damage to the coastal regions of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama made Katrina the most destructive and costliest natural disaster in the history of the United States.

On August 27, the storm was upgraded to Category 3 intensity (major hurricane) and at 12:40 a.m. CDT (0540 UTC) on August 28, Katrina was upgraded to Category 4. Later that morning, Katrina went through a period of rapid intensification, becoming a Category Five storm on theSaffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale. Katrina had maximum sustained winds of 175 mph (280 km/h), gusts of 215 mph (344 km/h) and a central pressure of 26.75 inches, or 906 mbar (hPa), by 1:00 p.m. CDT. It later reached a minimum pressure of 26.64 inches (902 mbar), making it the fifth most intense Atlantic Basin hurricane on record. Katrina's rapid intensification was due in part to its movement over the Gulf Loop Current.

Katrina made landfall on August 29 as a Category 4 hurricane with sustained winds of 145 mph (235 km/h) with higher gusts, at 6:10 a.m. CDT near Buras-Triumph, Louisiana. Making its way up the eastern Louisiana coastline, most communities in Plaquemines and St. Bernard Parish, and Slidell in St. Tammany Parish, were severely damaged by storm surge and the strong winds of the eyewall, which also grazed eastern New Orleans. A few hours later, it made landfall for a third time near the Louisiana/Mississippi border with 125 mph (200 km/h) Category 3 sustained winds. However, because the storm was so large, extreme damaging eyewall winds and the strong northeastern quadrant of the storm, pushing record storm surges onshore, smashed the entire Mississippi Gulf Coast, including towns in Mississippi such as Waveland, Bay St. Louis, Pass Christian, Long Beach, Gulfport, Biloxi, Ocean Springs, Gautier and Pascagoula, and, in Alabama, Bayou La Batre. As Katrina moved inland diagonally over Mississippi, high winds cut a swath of damage that affected almost the entire state.

Katrina weakened thereafter, losing hurricane-strength more than 150 miles (160 km) inland, near Jackson, Mississippi. It was downgraded to a tropical depression near Clarksville, Tennessee and continued to race northward.

Its lowest minimum pressure at landfall was 27.108 inches (918 mbar) (hPa), making it the third strongest hurricane on record to make landfall on the United States. A 10 to 30 foot (3 to 10 m) storm surge came ashore on over 200 continuous miles of coastline, from southeast Louisiana, including Mississippi and Alabama, through to the Florida panhandle. The 30 foot (10 m) storm surge recorded at Biloxi, Mississippi is the highest ever observed in America. Record storm surges that had not occurred in at least the last 150 years, inundated the entire Mississippi coastline, destroying many historic homes. The storm surge in Mobile, Alabama was the highest in that location since 1917, besting the category 3 Hurricane Frederic which hit the city directly in 1979.

Tornadoes

There were at least 36 confirmed tornadoes associated with Hurricane Katrina, with 11 tornadoes in Mississippi, 4 tornadoes in Alabama, 15 tornadoes in Georgia, 1 tornado in Virginia, and 5 tornadoes in Pennsylvania. Most of the tornadoes were rated F0 or F1, but three tornadoes were rated F2 in Georgia, and two were rated F2 in Mississippi. Tornadoes were reported in places including Adams and Cumberland counties in Pennsylvania, in Fauquier, Virginia, in Carroll County, Georgia, in Carrollton, in White County, Georgia, in Helen, and in Fort Valley, Georgia. Several other weak tornadoes were reported by tv stations in and around Mobile, Alabama and Harrison County, Mississippi. There were also reports of tornado touch downs in parts in Harvey, Louisiana, a town of the West Bank of the Mississippi River, just south of New Orleans.

One death was reported from an F2 tornado near Roopville, Georgia in Carroll County, and 500,000 chickens were killed or set free after about 15 poultry houses were damaged. Several injuries were reported with other tornadoes across Georgia. There was major damage in Helen, Georgia by an F2 tornado, which destroyed homes and a hotel. In Fort Valley, Georgia, another tornado ripped through a credit union and destroyed local houses and trees.

The tornado outbreak set new monthly records in Georgia, including the most reported on a single day in August, the state's first death from an August tornado, and the most tornado damage (monetarily) ever in August.