LSU football team relocating to Houston before Hurricane Ida impacts Louisiana

HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) -- The Louisiana State University football team is heading west before heading west.

The video above is from a previous story.

The team had plans to relocate to Houston Saturday evening ahead of Hurricane Ida making landfall in Louisiana. And these players aren't the only ones with plans of evacuating. As Ida moves northward in the Gulf of Mexico, residents in the New Orleans area have been filling the freeways leading out of the city.

The storm is expected to make landfall on the exact date Hurricane Katrina devastated a large swath of the Gulf Coast 16 years earlier. But whereas Katrina was a Category 3 when it made landfall southwest of New Orleans, Ida is expected to reach an extremely dangerous Category 4 hurricane, with top winds of 140 mph before making landfall likely west of New Orleans late Sunday.

SEE RELATED STORY: Louisianans scramble to evacuate ahead of Hurricane Ida

A spokesperson for LSU told ABC13 that the team will be arriving and has plans to remain in the Bayou City until departing for Los Angeles Thursday afternoon.

The Tigers are set to kick off their 2021 season Saturday at UCLA.