Winds were whipping up from the mouth of the Mississippi river onto the streets of New Orleans yesterday, eerily empty save for a few TV crews, a few stranded tourists and the occasional vagrant. From John Moran in New Orleans and Conor O'Clery, in New York
Announcing a curfew from 2 p.m., Mayor Ray Nagin said the "window of opportunity" had ended, leaving the normally bustling Big Easy looking something like a ghost town.
Over the past two days the city had begun the process of boarding up, stocking up and closing down.
On Canal Street in the city centre, hotels were emptying as locals and visitors heeded the mayor's call and convoys of buses and taxis clogged the highways out of the city, especially towards Louis Armstrong International Airport. One driver, when I asked if he free quickly, replied: "Not if you're going to the airport - the roads have turned into parking lots."
Some businesses braved the hurricane threat, though, and boarded up all windows with plywood while remaining open. On Royal Street in the French Quarter, one shopkeeper put up a sign reading, "Great Hurricane Sale", though she complained only $10 worth of business had been done all day.
Residents also in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and the Florida Panhandle prepared for the worst as Hurricane Ivan was expected to hit the Gulf Coast of the US early this morning with 135 m.p.h wind and 12ft waves.
With hurricane-force winds extending 105 miles from its centre, roughly two million people had been urged or ordered to leave coastal areas, including more than 1.2 million in New Orleans just west of the storm's projected path.
Ivan, which killed at least 68 people in the Caribbean, could be the worst hurricane to hit Alabama since 1979, when Frederic devastated hundreds of homes and businesses. It weakened slightly yesterday but it was still an "extremely dangerous category 4 hurricane", forecasters said.