Residents who have survived killer hurricanes such as Betsy, Camille and Katrina didn’t expect Lee to live up to that legacy.  “It’s a lot of rain. It’s nothing, nothing to Katrina,” said Malcolm James, 59, a federal investigator in New Orleans who lost his home after levees broke during Katrina in August 2005 and had to be airlifted by helicopter.  “This is mild,” he said. “Things could be worse.”  Lee comes less than a week after Hurricane Irene killed more than 40 people from North Carolina to Maine and knocked out power to millions. It was too soon to tell if Hurricane Katia, out in the Atlantic, could endanger the U.S.  By Friday evening, the outer bands of Lee, the 12th named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, already began dumping rain over southeastern Louisiana, southern Mississippi and Alabama.  About 2 1/2 inches of rain fell Friday in some places on the Gulf Coast, including Boothville, La., and Pascagoula, Miss. In New Orleans, rainfall totals ranged from less than an inch to slightly over 2 inches.  The storm’s biggest impact, so far, has been in the Gulf of Mexico oil fields. About half the Gulf’s normal daily oil production has been cut as rigs were evacuated, though oil prices were down sharply Friday on sour economic news.  Federal authorities said 169 of the 617 staffed production platforms have been evacuated, along with 16 of the 62 drilling rigs. That’s reduced daily production by about 666,000 barrels of oil and 1.7 billion cubic feet of gas.  Kevin Lucas, an offshore worker from Lafayette, La., was evacuated Thursday by boat from a production platform. He was in the New Orleans’ French Quarter on Friday. “It was rocking,” he said of the boat. “A few fellows got seasick.”  Tropical storm warnings were issued from Alabama to Texas and flash flood warnings extended along the Alabama coast into the Florida Panhandle.  The National Hurricane Center said the center of Lee was about 165 miles (265 kilomters) west-southwest west-southwest of the mouth of the Mississippi River on Friday and moving north at 5 mph (7 kph).  Forecasters say that Lee’s maximum sustained winds had increased slightly throughout the day to 45 mph (75 kph), and could get stronger.  Governors in Louisiana and Mississippi, as well as the mayors of New Orleans and Biloxi, Miss., declared states of emergency. Officials in several coastal Louisiana and Mississippi communities called for voluntary evacuations.  The Army Corps of Engineers was closing floodgates along the Harvey Canal, a commercial waterway in suburban New Orleans, but had not moved to shut a massive flood structure on the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet shipping channel.
NEW ORLEANS — Tropical Storm Lee formed in the waters off Louisiana on Friday, threatening a drenching along much of the Gulf coast over the Labor Day weekend with up to 20 inches of rain in some spots.