Hurricane Ida Hits Land… Weakens

Ida 5-Day Track, Image: NOAA

Hurricane Ida Satellite – CURRENT!, Image: NHC, NOAA

The satellite image above is CURRENT! If you want the latest track, click on the Hurricane Tracking link to your left, and click on National Hurricane Center.

Tropical Storm Ida is inland over Nicaragua this morning, hitting the Central American country as a category 1 hurricane overnight with 75 mile per hour winds. Due to land interaction, it has now weakened to a tropical storm, but there is some disagreement on how much it will weaken as it crosses Nicaragua and then Honduras before reemerging in the western Caribbean Sea. The National Hurricane Center has Ida coming off the tip of Honduras Saturday morning as a tropical depression and then continuing on its north-northwestward path toward the central Gulf of Mexico by the middle of next week.

Here’s what NHC forecasters had to say in their discussion this morning:

"... THE FORECAST TRACK BRINGS THE CENTER BACK OVER THE NORTHWESTERN CARIBBEAN SEA IN
A COUPLE OF DAYS...AND THE INTENSITY FORECAST SHOWS SOME
STRENGTHENING AFTER THAT TIME.  UPPER-LEVEL SOUTHWESTERLY WINDS ARE
EXPECTED TO PRODUCE MODERATE SHEAR OVER THE SYSTEM AND ONLY MODEST
STRENGTHENING IS FORECAST AFTER IDA EMERGES OVER WATER. THERE
REMAINS A LARGE DEGREE OF UNCERTAINTY IN THE LONGER RANGE
FORECAST...SINCE IDA MAY NOT SURVIVE ITS PASSAGE OVER LAND... "

Computer models are definitely bringing the storm or remnants of Ida through the Yucatan Straits into the Gulf of Mexico by the middle of next week. All eyes will be on Ida as it crosses Central America today and tomorrow. We really have to watch the satellite presentation to get an idea of how healthy or unhealthy the storm is. Land can severely disrupt a storm. However, Ida is not expected to cross an especially mountainous region, which would help disrupt the storm even more, possibly even kill it.

Dr. Jeff Masters has some interesting tidbits on whether Ida will survive the crossing of Nicaragua and Honduras in his blog today. You can access his blog by clicking on the link to your left. Also, it’s an old article from 2001, but here’s what USA Today has to say about  November hurricanes. I just checked the years 2002-2008, and we haven’t had a November storm hit the US during that time… so the information is current.

-Dawn Brown