Hurricane Ida rapidly intensified as it moved through the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico, making landfall in Louisiana as a powerful Category 4 storm with maximum sustained winds of 150 mph. Ida maintained major hurricane strength as it moved inland, unleashing unprecedented rainfall across the Northeastern United States that caused widespread flooding and damage before dissipating over Atlantic Canada. Climate change may have contributed to Ida's intensity, rapid intensification, and heavy rainfall amounts.
Hurricane Ida rapidly intensified as it moved through the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico, making landfall in Louisiana as a powerful Category 4 storm with maximum sustained winds of 150 mph. Ida maintained major hurricane strength as it moved inland, unleashing unprecedented rainfall across the Northeastern United States that caused widespread flooding and damage before dissipating over Atlantic Canada. Climate change may have contributed to Ida's intensity, rapid intensification, and heavy rainfall amounts.
Hurricane Ida rapidly intensified as it moved through the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico, making landfall in Louisiana as a powerful Category 4 storm with maximum sustained winds of 150 mph. Ida maintained major hurricane strength as it moved inland, unleashing unprecedented rainfall across the Northeastern United States that caused widespread flooding and damage before dissipating over Atlantic Canada. Climate change may have contributed to Ida's intensity, rapid intensification, and heavy rainfall amounts.
Hurricane Ida rapidly intensified as it moved through the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico, making landfall in Louisiana as a powerful Category 4 storm with maximum sustained winds of 150 mph. Ida maintained major hurricane strength as it moved inland, unleashing unprecedented rainfall across the Northeastern United States that caused widespread flooding and damage before dissipating over Atlantic Canada. Climate change may have contributed to Ida's intensity, rapid intensification, and heavy rainfall amounts.
This was due to some southwesterly wind shear, which gradually
lessened.[14] As Ida moved through the Cayman Islands and toward
northwestern Cuba, its structure improved, with more outflow, increased rainbands, and the organization of the convection into a central dense overcast (CDO).[15] Ida then rapidly intensified, with its winds increasing by 35 mph (55 km/h) in just over 11 hours. Late on August 27, the NHC upgraded Ida to Category 1 hurricane status, based on observations made by the Hurricane Hunters.[16] Around the same time, the hurricane made landfall on Cuba's Isla de la Juventud.[17] Ida later made a second landfall in Pinar del Río, Cuba, at 23:20 UTC on the same day.[18] Ida subsequently underwent rapid intensification and strengthened into a Category 2 hurricane at 18:00 UTC on August 28,[19] and then into a Category 3 major hurricane by 06:00 UTC on August 29. Shortly after being upgraded to a major hurricane, Ida began intensifying even more quickly, with the system's minimum central pressure dropping from 955 mbar (28.2 inHg) to 948 mbar (28.0 inHg) in an hour.[20] By 07:00 UTC, Ida had further intensified into a Category 4 hurricane, with the storm's sustained winds reaching 130 mph Hurricane Ida southeast of the (215 km/h).[21] Louisiana coast on August 29
As Ida neared the Louisiana coast, it further
strengthened to its peak intensity with 1-minute sustained wind speeds of 150 mph (240 km/h) and a minimum central barometric pressure of 929 mbar (27.4 inHg) around 14:00 UTC.[22] Ida's central pressure dropped 40 mbar in 12 hours overnight from August 28 to 29. At peak, the hurricane displayed a pronounced satellite presentation, with a near-symmetrical structure and a well-defined eye with an impressive stadium effect visible. Strengthening was then halted as the storm began an eyewall replacement cycle, forming a second eyewall, but Ida remained near its peak intensity. At 16:55 UTC, Ida made landfall near Port Fourchon, Louisiana, with sustained winds of 150 mph (240 km/h) and a central pressure of 930 mbar (27.46 inHg), tying the 1856 Last Island hurricane and Hurricane Laura as the strongest landfalling hurricane on record in Louisiana, as measured by maximum sustained wind, and trailing only Hurricane Katrina, as measured by central pressure at landfall.[23][24][25] A ship at sea near the point of Ida as an extratropical storm landfall verified this intensity, with reported gusts as high as 172 mph over the Northeastern United (277 km/h).[26] States Following landfall, Ida only slowly weakened at first, remaining a dangerous major hurricane. Mesovortices were also visible within the eye.[27] As the storm moved further inland, the majority of its cloud cover shifted northeast of the center, and Ida began a period of rapid weakening. On August 30, Ida weakened into a depression, as it moved inland. At that time, the NHC issued their last advisory on Ida, transferring the responsibility for continuing advisories to the Weather Prediction Center (WPC).[28] The system degenerated into an extratropical low two days later, as it moved over the central Appalachian Mountains.[29] As the system moved through the Northeastern United States on September 1–2, it combined with a frontal zone to unleash unprecedented rains across the region, regaining tropical-storm-force winds in the process, before moving out into the Atlantic.[30][31] On the next day, Ida's remnants, boosted by a non-tropical area of low pressure, moved northeastward across Atlantic Canada, bringing heavy rain and gale-force winds to communities throughout the region, before dissipating in the Gulf of St. Lawrence late on September 4.[32][33]
There has been no formal study of the exact impact of climate change on Hurricane Ida yet. Several of its characteristics are probably more common in a warmer climate: the intensity, the rapid intensification, and the amount of rainfall over land.[34]
