Having crossed south Florida as a minimal storm, Katrina was expected to turn north, intensify to a Category 3 and make landfall around Panama City, FL. As the day progressed, steering developed that would cause Katrina to track farther to the west on its way across the Gulf of Mexico.  Warm waters suggested intensification and it looked like it would reach Category 4  before making landfall Monday afternoon in Mississippi or Louisiana.

Max Mayfield head of the National Hurricane Center analyzed the data and started making emergency phone calls. Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour and Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco got two of those calls and immediately declared states of emergency. Members of Congress would later pick these phone calls as the point in time that they believed Blanco and Nagin should have ordered mandatory evacuations. Blanco was confident that "very well-coordinated evacuations" were planned that will be enacted "if there's a direct threat." The redesign of the contraflow plans after 2004's Ivan evacuation may have given her this sense of confidence.

Robert Latham, director of the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency, said evacuations of tourists along the coast could begin late Saturday afternoon, followed by mandatory evacuations of coastal residents on Sunday. The National Guard was activated to help with storm preparations. Red Cross emergency officials also were keeping an eye on Katrina.

It was still very early in the lifecycle of this emergency.

By Friday evening local weathercasters in the New Orleans area were watching the storm anxiously. At this point I took note of the storm and planned to check again in the morning to see if it was continuing to the west or turning north early. I was not particularly concerned because this was just another in a long series of storms we'd had to watch over the past ten years.

I expected two or three mandatory evacuations would be called in 2006. It didn't happen. There just have not been any threats. El Nino activity with resulting high level shear across the Gulf made 2006 an unusually quiet season. We'll have to wait until next year to see if authorities will find a reasonable accomodation.

July 2007 was unnaturally quiet.

It took until Gustav came visiting on Labor Day, 2008 before the Mayor called for the next evacuation of the City of New Orleans.