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Hurricane Ida near the Nicaragua coast

It became obviously yesterday morning that the satellite presentation of Ida was rapidly improving and that we likely already had a well defined tropical system in the southwest Caribbean. The organization continued and aircraft recon found a strong tropical storm and as of 7am this morning Ida was upgraded to a 75mph category 1 hurricane our 3^rd hurricane of the season. Ida is very near the Nicaraguan coast and will likely move across eastern parts of Honduras and Nicaragua later today and tomorrow.

 

The big question then becomes how long does Ida remain over land and how much weakening does occur. Most models show Ida turning north and re-emerging in the northwest Caribbean Sea by Friday night and Saturday morning. One other alternative put forth by the NOGAPS is that the storm stays inland over Central America and the Yucatan.  The ECMWF model is not properly resolving Ida yet and we continue to see the models struggling some with the system in the southern Gulf and how it interacts with Ida.

 

The synoptic situation is this, the system in the southern Gulf will likely induce enough of a weakness to allow a pole ward component to the motion of Ida and thus Ida will likely not get stuck over Central America but will re-emerge in the northwest Caribbean as probably a tropical depression or a weak tropical storm after it’s jaunt over land. Once back over water, I see no reason why Ida would not re-strengthen into a hurricane and although I think the GFDL scenario of a category 4 hurricane is a overdone, it isn’t impossible, although the more likely scenario is a category 1 or 2 storm. A building upper ridge to the west and northwest of Ida over Florida will begin to steer Ida to the northwest and into the Gulf. Early next week the global models are showing a trough moving through the Midwest which will begin to induce a more northerly motion and IF the trough captures Ida a northeast or east motion taking the storm towards central and eastern Gulf Coast or the west coast of Florida. Another scenario is that the trough doesn’t completely capture Ida leaving it in the gulf to drift south or stall but higher shear and dry air in the Gulf could kill Ida in the Gulf. Those are our 2 scenarios as of now. If the first scenario happens Ida would threaten the central or eastern Gulf regions probably by Wednesday or so of next week. Water temperatures cool in the gulf to the low 80s and in the upper 70s in the northern Gulf. So Ida would likely not strengthen much once in the Gulf and could begin to weaken, thus the threat of a land-falling major hurricane is low, however this of course could still be a significant system and folks in the Gulf region need to keep an eye on Ida.