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Ida drops to tropical storm, crosses Nicaragua

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By NEIL JOHNSON | The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 5, 2009

Updated: 11/05/2009 01:15 pm

TAMPA - Ida has been downgraded to a tropical storm, weakening as it dumps heavy rains over Nicaragua.

By next week, Ida could be churning near the Gulf of Mexico.

The season's ninth storm formed Wednesday in the far southwest Caribbean Sea and had grown to hurricane strength over the warm water. Ida is now a tropical storm, with winds at 65 mph as it heads to the northwest about 7 mph.

The storm is centered about 75 miles north of Bluefields, Nicaragua, and had moved little since making landfall.

The long-range forecast calls for Ida to be roughly between the Yucatan Peninsula and western Cuba by early Tuesday morning as tropical storm.

Forecasts call for the storm to slow as it nears the Gulf, a sign that steering currents will be weak. There is plenty of uncertainty in predictions of where Ida will go in the Gulf.

There is a possibility that Ida will not survive the weekend as it spends today, Friday and Saturday over land, weakening to a depression before it reaches water early Sunday.

The hurricane center expects Ida to slowly gain strength after emerging into the Caribbean on Sunday but keep it below hurricane force.

Ida formed from an area of low pressure created by the remains of a front that reached the southern Caribbean. This late in the season most storms form from the remnants of fronts in the Caribbean or Gulf where water is still warm enough to fuel a storm.

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