New Orleans Levees Hold Up to Isaac

New Orleans could use a break

Hurricane Isaac began a slow, drenching slog inland from the Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday, pushing water over a rural Louisiana levee and stranding some people in homes and cars as the storm spun into a newly fortified New Orleans exactly seven years after Katrina.

Although Isaac was much weaker than the 2005 hurricane that crippled the city, the threat of dangerous storm surges and flooding from heavy rain was expected to last all day and into the night as the immense comma-shaped storm crawled across Louisiana.