What would happen if a Katrina like Hurricane hit the Gulf next month ?

it would spread the oil but the oil isn't going to make the Gulf more friendly or affect the temperature of the water.

Most likely what would happen is that the surge will spread the oil over any area that it will cover. There is also a brighter side where there is speculation that the oil could limit the amount of evaporation which could make for drier and weaker storms and that it could possibly mix the oil & water together and that could help break down the oil. Basically the only thing that the NOAA does know is that they don't know how a hurricane will affect the oil coating the Gulf.

Katrina was the stongest hurricane ever rocorded that made landfall in North America, so it's very unlikely there will be a Katrina this year (or any particular year). The storm could push more oil ashore, it could push it farther out to sea, or even disperse the spill. That depends on exactly which path the storm took. However, the oil in the water wouldn't affect the storm and it isn't making the water warmer. Recent research has found that Katrina became so strong because it happened to pass over the top of a cut-off coil of gulf stream water, which is very warm because it comes from the tropics. Nothing to do with "global warming", pollution, or anything else. The oil is also only affecting a small part of the Gulf of Mexico: http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/05/gulf_of_mexico_oil_spill_anima.html

The worst of the storms always happen in July/August when the Gulf waters are warmest. But at this point, any storm in the Gulf would be a disaster compounded by another disaster. I hear that we had hundreds of thousands of oil spilled into the Gulf during Katrina and that nature took care of alot of it. We can clean it up from the beaches with a simple shovel, but inside the delicate marshes, where most of the crustaceans hatch and thrive is quite a different story. We have spent millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours to re-build the marsh grasses on these barrier islands. The barrier islands help stall the deadly storm surge. Now they are saying we cannot build more barrier islands with dredging equipment because there are oil pipes underground and they don't even know exactly where the pipes are. The maps are outdated, as barrier islands have deteriorated since the pipes were originally installed. So if we were to hit a pipe, we could accidentally create our own, secondary oil spill. As of today, the tube that is gathering some of the spilling oil is reported to not be working as well as it was a few days ago, and never worked as well as BP had hoped. Nothing BP has promised so far has come to any sort of fruition. Our marshes are being destroyed and BP says it cannot find any more boom to help us. Yet I see boom for sale on craigslist in the "materials" section. It looks bad for the marshes, but the beaches can be cleaned up much more easily, once the well is capped - if that ever happens.

The effect to the Gulf Coast and East coast would be devastating. The spill would spread in vast unknown proportions. The well has still not been capped and is still "spilling" oil into the Gulf 24hr/day. Complete environment collapse.

i guess ultimate devastation....... :(