Isaac, now a Category 1 hurricane, has already brought flooding rains to Charleston, S.C. Later Tuesday night the giant storm will move up into much of Louisiana and Mississippi bringing a storm surge threat to coastal cities. New Orleans may see as much as 20 inches of rain. Weather Channel meteorologist Jim Cantore reports from New Orleans.
By Miguel Llanos, NBC News
Updated at 10:08 p.m. ET: Hurricane Isaac made landfall at 8 p.m. Tuesday in southeastern Louisiana as a Category 1 hurricane. The slow-moving storm is expected to dump up to 20 inches of rain in some spots over two days.
Isaac had 80 mph sustained winds -- up from 75 mph when it reached hurricane status earlier in the afternoon.
"It's going to be a long period of really bad weather" for the Louisiana and Mississippi coasts as well as areas inland, National Hurricane Center Director Rick Knabb said. Even before landfall, some flooded roads and power outages were reported in those states.
New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu said he expects his city "will get the brunt of it." Nola.com reported that the hurricane would arrive in New Orleans around 1 a.m., accompanied by high winds. Utility officials said nearly 150,000 homes and businesses in southeastern Louisiana have been left without power, utility officials said.
"We think that we're well prepared," Landrieu said at a briefing, while emphasizing that much depends on how well residents heed warnings to hunker down.
New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu?says "we don't expect a Katrina-like event, but remember there are things about a Category 1 storm that can kill you." Watch his news conference on Isaac preparations.
No mandatory evacuations were ordered inside New Orleans, which sits behind levees and pumps reinforced after Hurricane Katrina, which blew ashore seven years ago.
While Isaac is well below the intensity of Katrina, a powerful Category 3 storm on landfall, its vast size and slow track have forecasters predicting widespread flooding.
Hundreds of Army National Guard troops took up positions around New Orleans to ward off any threat of looting.
Their arrival came as bands of driving rain and stiff winds began battering the city and other parts of the coast. Some 10,000 homes and businesses had lost power in southern Louisiana by late afternoon, as did 6,000 customers in Mobile, Ala.
New Orleans' Jefferson Parish has many low-lying areas that are outside the Hurricane Protection Levee System. John Young, Jefferson Parish president, joins NewsNation to talk about the dangerous threats to the areas from the storm.
President Barack Obama added his voice to those of local officials urging residents to hunker down or evacuate if told to do so. "Now's not the time to tempt fate," he said in brief comments Tuesday morning. "Listen to your local officials and follow their directions, including if they tell you to evacuate."
"The inland flooding from the heavy rainfall could extend hundreds of miles from the coast," Knabb said.
The streets of New Orleans were virtually empty Tuesday as most heeded the warning to take shelter at home, confident in the city's ability to handle Isaac. NBC's Lester Holt reports from New Orleans.
Isaac is very wide as storms go, with tropical storm-force winds stretching 185 miles from its center. Hurricane-force winds extend out 60 miles.
Its size and slow motion, Knabb said, will make for a large storm surge, especially in southeast Louisiana, where a surge up to 12 feet is predicted.
By Tuesday afternoon, some beach areas were seeing water lapping onto streets.
NBC's Lester Holt takes a look at how the legacy of Katrina has residents fleeing for higher ground as Tropical Storm Isaac heads for New Orleans, La. Meanwhile, officials say stronger and higher defenses built since Katrina will hold.
Rainfall of 7-14 inches across the coast as well as inland is likely, and a few places could even see 20 inches, Knabb said.
Residents should expect "a lot of hazards to contend with, even isolated tornadoes" into Wednesday, Knabb said.
Related:?Follow Isaac's path with our storm tracker
Related: Images, tweets about Isaac
Isaac was moving to the northwest at 8 mph and will arrive in New Orleans seven years to the day Katrina struck on Aug. 29, 2005, killing more than 1,800 people and causing billions of dollars of damage.?
Levees built or repaired after Katrina are designed to withstand far more than that 12-foot surge, in some cases storm surges as high as 26 feet.
Mandatory evacuations were issued Monday for unprotected, low-lying areas outside New Orleans, as well as low-lying areas in Mississippi.
The Dunbar Pier on the bay side of the Bay St. Louis peninsula was rebuilt in 2007 after Katrina completely destroyed the original. The sign notifying the public of the pier's expansion was swamped Tuesday.
Residents in coastal communities from Louisiana to Mississippi stocked up on food and water and tried to secure their homes, cars and boats.?
"Right now we?re starting to experience some flooding of low-lying areas along the beachfront," Brian Adam, emergency management director in Mississippi's?Hancock County, told NBC News. "We?ve opened two shelters and have about 185 people there."
In Bay St. Louis, Miss., residents in low-lying areas evacuated while those on high ground were keeping an eye on Isaac, resident Ellis Anderson told NBC News.
From weather.com: Live updates and analysis
"It's not expected to be another Katrina," she said. "But everybody is watching it very seriously" because of the potential path that could push water into the area hard hit by Katrina and Hurricane Gustav in 2008.
Alan Diaz / AP
Tropical Storm Isaac drenches multiple countries as it moves toward Louisiana.
Gustav "went to the west of New Orleans," she recalled, pushing "all that water into that cup that is the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. ...?We were getting beaten up and we had a lot of homes that were flooded."
In New Orleans, a bumper-to-bumper stream of vehicles left the city Monday on a highway toward Baton Rouge in search of higher ground. Others prepared or were forced to ride the storm out.
Related: America's deadliest hurricanes
Related: Isaac tests Gulf oil spill defenses
Related: Bad memories return to New Orleans
Related: Drought-hit states welcome Isaac's rain
Along Canal Street in New Orleans' historic French Quarter, crews boarded up the windows of some stores and businesses.?
Offshore in the Gulf, regulators said that 93 percent of daily oil and 67 percent of daily natural gas production in U.S.-regulated areas have been shut down by the hurricane.
Isaac has killed at least 22 people and caused significant flooding and damage in Haiti and the Dominican Republic before skirting the southern tip of Florida on Sunday.?
Isaac will put New Orleans' new $15 billion levee system to test for the first time since its post-Katrina upgrade. However, there's one major problem – the levee is only eight feet, well below the expected 12-foot storm surge.
Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.?
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