I was in Dallas in late August 2021 when I first heard about a tropical storm system called Hurricane Ida, which was gathering strength as it pushed up through the Gulf of Mexico toward Louisiana. I had just spent two weeks along the Louisiana coast, writing about how indigenous fishing communities in the area were struggling against shoreline erosion and depopulation, and I was supposed to drive to Phoenix the next day.
Instead, I decided to turn around and head back. I drove south down I-49, past thousands of cars going in the other direction, and holed up in a hotel in the city of Lafayette, where the staff had tarped up all the windows to protect against the wind. The storm barreled through the next day with winds of almost 150 miles per hour, leveling entire towns along the coast and overtopping levees along the Mississippi River around New Orleans.
