Hurricane Barry makes landfall in Louisiana, residents brace for dangerous flooding

Dangerous and slow-moving Hurricane Barry made landfall in Louisiana Saturday afternoon as residents braced for “off the chart” amounts of rain.

Barry was a hurricane when it made landfall — but it quickly weakened to a tropical storm that promised to dump heavy rains that could last for days and pose a test of the flood-prevention systems built after Hurricane Katrina 14 years ago.

The storm made landfall near Intracoastal City, Louisiana, about 160 miles west of New Orleans, and its winds fell to 70 mph, the National Hurricane Center said.

The center warned of dangerous storm surge, strong winds and heavy rains — with rainfall reaching 25 inches in some areas. (Watch Live coverage from ABC News in the video player below)

National Hurricane Center director Ken Graham said that Barry had gathered “a big slough of moisture” and was expected to dump rain on the area throughout the weekend.

He described Barry’s slow-moving trajectory as enabling it to gather immense amounts of water that it will eventually dump over saturated areas well inland, flooding rivers and creeks.

“That is just an amazing amount of moisture,” he said. “That is off the chart.”

The Coast Guard rescued more than a dozen people from the remote Isle de Jean Charles, south of New Orleans, where water rose so high that some residents clung to rooftops. But in the city, locals and tourists wandered through mostly empty streets under a light rain or stayed indoors.

Ludovico Torri said he woke Saturday to find Lake Pontchartrain lapping at his home in Mandeville, north of New Orleans.

“When we woke up this morning, the entire street and area under the house was under water,” he told CNN. “The waves from the lake are crashing onto the land as if it is all one big lake.”

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said none of the main levees on the Mississippi River in the state had failed or been breached so far because of Tropical Storm Barry.

But he warned at a news conference on Saturday that the storm was just beginning and the state faced significant threats in the days ahead.

“The real danger in this storm was never about the wind anyway,” the governor said. “It’s always been about the rain, and that remains a very significant threat.”

Authorities said water was already flowing over the tops of a few levees in Plaquemines Parish south of New Orleans, where fingers of land extend deep into the Gulf of Mexico. But those levees are not on the Mississippi River, the governor indicated.

Some areas of Louisiana were under mandatory evacuation orders as Barry, which came ashore as the first hurricane of the Atlantic hurricane season, barreled through the state. Over 300 people had evacuated to shelters, officials said.

Downpours also lashed coastal Alabama and Mississippi. Parts of Dauphin Island, a barrier island in Alabama 200 miles from where Barry was headed, were flooded both by rain and surging water from the Gulf, said Mayor Jeff Collier, who was driving around in a Humvee to survey damage.

In addition, tornadoes posed a risk from southeast Louisiana to south Alabama.

More than 100,000 customers were without power Saturday afternoon in Louisiana and Mississippi. Hundreds of flights in New Orleans were canceled, and some cruise ship departures were in flux.

Tropical Storm Barry was expected to continue weakening and become a tropical depression on Sunday, but the storm’s slow trek meant extended heavy rain was expected to soak the Gulf Coast through the lower Mississippi Valley.