High winds and heavy rains lashed southern Louisiana today as a diminished but still dangerous Hurricane Lili moved in from the Gulf of Mexico.
The storm's eye swept into the marshy Louisiana coast near the Cajun town of New Iberia, where residents who had not fled inland took shelter behind boarded up windows.
Debris swirled in the air above the abandoned streets of the quaint town on the banks of Bayou Teche, where moss-covered tree limbs were torn down and traffic lights toppled by 90 mile per hour winds.
Thousands of people fled the area, which is 150 miles west of New Orleans, yesterday when Lili was a ferocious Category 4 storm with 145 mile per hour winds.
The storm's winds dropped overnight to 100 miles per hour as it hit cooler waters in the gulf and were falling further as it moved inland.
The National Hurricane Center in Miami this afternoon said that Lili's maximum sustained winds were down to 90 miles per hour.
When a hurricane's winds drop below 96 miles per hour it become a Category 1 storm that inflicts minimal damage.