Ida is pretty healthy right now.  With sustained winds of 105 mph as of the 6PM CDT update, Ida is a strong category 2 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Scale.

Tomorrow and Tuesday, Ida should start to weaken as it encounters more upper-level wind shear and moves into somewhat cooler waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

Ida is expected to make landfall between eastern Louisiana and the Florida panhandle late Monday or early Tuesday.  No one really knows how strong the storm will be at that point.  Ida will be interesting to watch to say the least.  We’ll keep you posted.

Meteorologist Cheryl Nelson

After a super-quiet hurricane season, hurricane Ida formed near the Central American coast early this morning. This is not unusual. Prime locations for late season storms are in the southern Gulf of Mexico and the Carribean. Why? The jet stream drops south through the Fall season and tends to rip apart thunderstorms from centralizing around a central core or low pressure system. The Fall jet stream has not made it that far south as of yet and the water temps are still very warm…above 80 degrees…the temp your need for tropical system formation. Where is it going. It is moving inland now and whatever is left of it should eventually make it into the Gulf of Mexico later in the weekend or early next week. It’s way to early to tell if we could get some rain from that later next week…but stay tuned! Crazier things have happened…

Jon Cash