like that. these are not sustained winds. these are gusts coming through. i m a sizable guy, so to have wind blows me like, means it s pretty serious. the risk is trees coming down onto power lines, things like that. the good news here is that, unlike katrina and other storms, this moves fast which may mean there won t be as much saturation in the ground, which may mean as many trees may not come down, but with 140-mile-an-hour winds you ll get trees and signs coming down, power lines coming down. right now a quarter of a million people, at least, in this city are without power. that was the last count. that s about half an hour old. lots and lots of people without power in the city.
you just have a few more hours really to prepare because early tomorrow morning we re going to have the weather degrade rather rapidly. tropical storm force winds well inland by about 8:00 a.m. so we are asking people to evacuate, if you need to evacuate. but really where you go to bed tonight, you need to be prepared to ride out the storm. the storm is going to be very severe. it will be a category 4 when it makes landfall. it should make landfall about 7:00 p.m. tomorrow night. about 140-mile-an-hour winds. that will happen between terrebonne and lafourche parishes in southeast louisiana. so we just have a lot of work to do between now and then. storm surge will be up to 15 feet which will test all of our protection systems down along the coast, which is why we re evacuating people from those coastal areas, the ones that you were just referring to is the ones that will be uninhabitable for some period of time to come.
one last thing before we go. as we mentioned earlier in the hour, this sunday marks the 16th anniversary of hurricane katrina s landfall in louisiana. and the state is once again bracing for a major storm. ida became a hurricane today, and forecasters warn it could become a category 3 or 4 hurricane by sunday. that would make it the biggest storm to hit the u.s. so far this year, the potential of 140-mile-an-hour winds and life-threatening storm surge. the mayor of new orleans has ordered an evacuation for those that live outside of the levee
from a nearby school. i m up here, the fires there, and she s on the other side. reporter: 40 acres burned. but miraculously, no one was injured. so, let s get right to kayna whitworth, with us live tonight. and kayna, we do know mandatory evacuations now in place for many in that community? reporter: yeah, david, so, we ve actually seen police officers going door-to-door, telling people, now is the time to evacuate. they are concerned about the winds shifting this afternoon, saying the onshore winds could actually push what s left of that fire into these homes. david? all right, kayna whitworth on the scene tonight. kayna, thank you. meantime, to the violent storm system kicking up again today. at least nine confirmed tornadoes from texas to tennessee and overnight, that tornado that hit dallas, they have now revealed it was an ef-3. the images overnight. the lightning showing that tornado in north dallas. it was an ef-3 with 140-mile-an-hour winds. it struck after dark. d
florida coastline. we ll see what that model does. this will be coming out about every 12 hours or so. that s all we can do. too early for hurricane watches. too early for the warnings and evacuation orders. it is just get prepared. when the orders come, move out quickly. you got my attention with one thing i said. you said you have never seen a storm moving in potentially as slowly as this one. four miles an hour. i guess that s about half the speed you re saying. we have had storms that have stalled out. we ve had storms that have smaller, weaker storms that have stalled right near the coast. just look at the houston storm with 50, 60 inches of rain. what i ve never seen is the forecast for a 140-mile-an-hour cat 4 to stall out and move on shore that slowly.