As video streamed in, the images showed the once bustling city of New Orleans as an underwater ghost town with cars floating atop river-like water heights and houses halfway underwater.

When it made landfall, the 165-mph winds lost a bit of their gust. As a Category 4 storm with 145-mph winds, however, it still wrought destruction upon the abandoned city.

Palm trees were stripped of their fronds, unboarded windows were blown out and people sought “shelter” on top of their homes. The roof of the makeshift emergency shelter, the Superdome, was peeling back and leaking as 10,000 people looked on.

Television anchors brave enough to venture outdoors found themselves dodging street signs and other debris, sometimes standing hip-deep in fast waters.

The storm was eventually downgraded to a Category 1, but not before flooding areas such as Biloxi, Miss. and Mobile, Ala., which saw more than two feet of flooding.

The eye of Hurricane Katrina passed over New Orleans and was headed toward Biloxi and Mobile, said geography professor David Changnon.

Areas on the right side of the hurricane’s eye suffered the most damage, he said.

Those cities, along with the east coast of Mississippi, will feel the brunt of the storm, Changnon said.

As of press time, the storm leveled off to a Category 1.

It was still too early to gauge how much damage the hurricane and the ensuing floods caused. However, its effect on the oil market is already observable.

“We should expect at least a 10-cent hike [in gas prices] over the next week or two, if not more,” NIU meteorologist Gilbert Sebenste said.

New Orleans is home to one of the nation’s most active sea ports.

Seventy-percent of the United States’ oil resources are imported, and close to 50 percent of the imported oil comes through the Port of New Orleans. So roughly 35 percent of this oil has been disturbed, Sebenste said.

The oil rigs and platforms are located along the southeastern Texas coast, the Louisiana coastline and off the shore of Louisiana and Mississippi.

They are designed to sustain severe hurricanes, but with 35-foot waves crashing into the oil rigs and platform, there are few preventative measures to be taken, Sebenste said.

The rigs in Texas are safe, but the rigs in Louisiana are “sitting ducks,” he said.

Before the storm, a barrel of oil was roughly $65, Sebenste said, and the oil market closed at $67.20. At one point, it soared more than $5, setting a record at $70.80.

As for DeKalb, gasoline prices rose slightly to an area average of $2.73.

Katrina may be one of the worst hurricanes to hit the United States, Sebenste said.

In 1992, Hurricane Andrew made its way along the coast of Florida causing horrific damage – its highest winds reaching 165 mph.

A Category 5 hurricane hit Biloxi in 1969, while Hurricane Camille caused massive devastation just east of New Orleans and along the coast of Mississippi.

Hurricane Camille was slightly more devastating than Katrina because Camille hit land with wind speeds of 155 mph, while Katrina landed at 145 mph.

As Katrina moved farther from the 80-90 degree ocean waters, the storm lost a bit of its ferocity.

A hurricane feeds off warm ocean water, but as it reaches land the hurricane gets weaker. The strength of a hurricane is measured by a five level system called the Saffir-Simpson scale of strength. A Category 5 hurricane is the most severe.

Names of hurricanes are chosen by an international committee and alternate between female and male names. The committee recycles names of less-damaging hurricanes and retires names of strong ones, such as Camille and Andrew.