When the Thunder Spoke Over Lake Pontchartrain

On August 29, 2021, Hurricane Ida made landfall in Louisiana with 150-mile-per-hour winds. Marcus Thibodaux, a shrimper from Lafitte, had weathered dozens of storms in his fifty-three years on the bayou. But that night, huddled with his family in a concrete block church on higher ground, he heard something different. The wind peeled back roofing tin like paper. Cypress trees older than his grandfather snapped like matchsticks.…