The "weakening" from 175 to 165 mph and pressure rise of one millibar is nothing in the terms of this storm and is to be expected in an intense hurricane like this. New Orleans has been beat to death; it's a deader, no matter which way you look at it, because even if Katrina would "weaken" (i.e. go through another ERC, since there is nothing else to trip up this monster ) to a strong Cat 4, it is still going to be devastated by this storm. I wonder if, with this 22-30 foot storm surge and 25-50 foot waves on top of that, the Chandeleur Islands and some of the other little islands along the Mississippi coast and peninsulas on the Delta might be wiped out entirely by Katrina. With that kind of water force, there is going to be catastropic coastlline damage. Some of the small towns southeast of New Orleans (i.e. Buras, Grand Isle) are probably going to be wiped off the map and never be rebuilt, primarily because the land they sit on is probably going to be destroyed by Katrina's gargantuan storm surge. Cartographers are probably going to half to redraw maps of southeast Louisiana and south Missisppi after the storm abates, because I am betting that the appearance of the coastline will be altered dramatically.
Pray for those who either don't have the means or don't have the sense to get out the way of this supercane.