October seemed nuts with record snow, cold, heat, rain and floods.  Now November is here and things couldn't be more calm.   But check out Ida! The late season Tropical Storm is back over

water and re-strengthening in the western Caribbean.  Ida slowly passed over eastern Nicaragua and Honduras this week and could've been much worse had it tracked 100 miles west--to the more mountainous region.  While there was a significant damage to the eastern coastal areas of Nicaragua, they were certainly spared from what could have been a much deadlier scenario.  Most of the immediate eastern coast of Nicaragua and Honduras is fairly flat.

Tropical storms are moisture rich and when they hit mountains, the moist air has to rise causing  cooling, then increased condensation and then increased rain.  It's called Orographic Lift in meteorological terms.  Orographic lift causes more of the moisture in the storm fall as rain, so rainfall totals are much higher in mountanous terrain. Furthermore,  runoff in mountains is more dramatic and the threat for mudslides increases from gravitational pull on the waterlogged mountainsides.

In 1998, a late October Hurricane Mitch stalled over Honduras, lingering for 3 days over the western side of Central America.  Rainfall totals were estimated between 60-80 inches and an estimated 11,000 people died, primarily in Honduras and Nicaragua.   Mitch was the second deadliest tropical cyclone in the Atlantic Basin, behind the 1780 Great Hurricane that hit the Lesser Antilles.  Btw...A great read on Hurricane Mitch... The Ship and The Storm

Ida is now back over the abnormally warm waters in the western Caribbean and is strengthening quickly.  As it moves north, it has about a 36 hour window where it can further strengthen and I'd give it about a 50% chance of becoming a hurricane again by tomorrow afternoon just east of Cancun.  After that, Ida will move north into the Gulf of Mexico where the water's temperature is cooler and the upper level winds will be stronger...this combo should rip Ida apart pretty quickly.  At this point it looks like the biggest impact for the U.S. from Ida will be some widespread 3-5" rainfall totals in Louisianna, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and the Florida panhandle.  This will begin Monday afternoon and likely go through Wednesday/Thursday.

Ida is just the ninth (and probably last) tropical cyclone of the 2009 Atlantic Hurricane Season.