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Olivia Takla

Dr. Wnek

Oceanography

10 November 2021

Hurricane Ida: An Analysis of its Formation and Devastation

Hurricane Ida is one of the most powerful and rapidly intensifying storms to hit the

United States. The Category 4 storm made landfall in Louisiana on the sixteenth anniversary of

Hurricane Katrina on August 29, 2021 with sustained winds of 150 miles per hour (Omer, 2021).

Its remnants went on to trigger disastrous rainfall flooding in the Northeast (Figure 1). Ida

formed as a tropical depression in the Caribbean Sea on August 26, 2021, south of the Cayman

Islands. Just over six hours later, an Air Force Reserve Hurricane Hunter mission found its winds

were strong enough to upgrade to Tropical Storm Ida (Omer, 2021). A burst of thunderstorms

near Ida's center then allowed it to rapidly intensify into a hurricane on August 27, 2021, as it

moved over western Cuba. As Hurricane Ida headed into the Gulf of Mexico, a nearby oceanic

eddy—a giant, slowly swirling pool of warm water—directly ahead in its path, provided Ida with

warm water from the Gulf of Mexico, winds aloft spreading apart and plenty of moist air, thus

rapidly intensifying Ida from a weak Category 1 hurricane to Category 4 status in the span of less

24 hours (US Department of Commerce, 2018). Ida's center crossed the coast near Port Fourchon

later that day with maximum sustained winds of 150 mph, making it a high-end Category 4

hurricane (Omer, 2021).

The hurricane weakened to a tropical storm and then a tropical depression as it tracked

over Mississippi on August 30, 2021. From there, Tropical Depression Ida tracked through the
Tennessee Valley to as far north as West Virginia by September 1, 2021, where it was declared

to

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be a post-tropical remnant. Ida's remnants then combined with a stationary front to produce

major, deadly rainfall flooding in the Northeast (Diaz, 2021).

One of Ida’s devastating effects was the storm surges it triggered. Storm surge pushed water into

many areas outside the protection of levees (ridges that regulate water levels) in southeast

Louisiana, as well as along the coast in Mississippi (Storm Surge and Coastal Flooding, 2021).

Several NOAA gauges captured peak inundation from 6 to 7 feet above dry ground in Waveland,

Mississippi, and Shell Beach, Louisiana, during and even after Ida's landfall as strong onshore

winds continued to pile water ashore. Multiple homes were reportedly removed from their

foundations by storm surge and many areas such as neighborhoods in New Orleans East, were

under mandatory evacuation outside of protection from levees (Elliott, 2021). The combination

of storm surge and torrential rain prompted the National Weather Service to issue rare flash

flood emergencies for the lakeshore area of metro New Orleans (Elliott, 2021).

The serious storm surge flooding was accompanied by severe wind gusts. The National

Weather Service issued several extreme wind warnings for parts of southeast Louisiana, a

rarely-issued warning for tornado-like winds of 115 mph or greater in the eyewall of Ida.

Numerous wind gusts over 100 mph were clocked in far southeast Louisiana near the coast. A

gust of 172 mph was measured aboard a ship in Port Fourchon as Ida made landfall, one of the

strongest hurricane gusts on record in the U.S. (US Department of Commerce, 2021). In the New

Orleans metro area, wind gusts up to 99 miles per hour not only downed trees and power lines

but also damaged and even destroyed some older buildings. Over one million customers lost
power in Louisiana from Ida wind and storm surges. Ida tied two other hurricanes for the

strongest landfall on record in the state of Louisiana based on maximum wind speeds (Omer,

2021).

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In addition to water surging from the Gulf of Mexico, Ida dumped torrential rain in parts of

Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and the western Florida Panhandle. Ten to fourteen inches of

rain was measured in New Orleans before rain ended early August 29, 2021. Rigolets-Slidell,

Louisiana, reported 15.73 inches of rainfall from Ida (Post-Tropical Cyclone IDA 2021). In

Jackson County, Mississippi, an estimated 300 homes were flooded and 150 road closures were

prompted. Parts of southern Alabama picked up 7 to 9 inches of rain and Wilmer, Alabama,

measured 11.24 inches. Walnut Hill, Florida, tallied 8.20 inches of rain (Post-Tropical Cyclone

IDA, 2021). Several feet of storm surge from Lake Pontchartrain coupled with torrential rain in

LaPlace, about 25 miles from downtown New Orleans, entered homes and trapped residents.

Perhaps Ida’s most devastating effect was triggering one of the worst urban flood disasters in

U.S. history in the Northeast. The storm and its remnants caused at least 69 confirmed fatalities

across the Northeast, the majority due to flooding in New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and

Connecticut (Auguste & Lucci, 2021). The remnant moisture and energy from Ida merged with a

front over the mid-Atlantic and Northeast to produce disastrous flooding on September 1, 2021,

into early September 2, 2021. Flemington, New Jersey, had the top rainfall total with 11 inches,

but totals over 6 inches were reported in parts of southeast New York, Pennsylvania,

Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. New York City's Central Park picked up 3.15

inches of rainfall in a single hour on the evening of September 1, 2021—the heaviest one-hour

rainfall on record in Central Park (US Department of Commerce, 2021). Total rainfall for
 September 1, 2021, was 7.13 inches, making it New York City's fifth-wettest day on record

dating to 1869. Newark, New Jersey, picked up 8.41 inches of rain the same day, making it the

wettest calendar day on record there dating to 1931. The Schuylkill River in Philadelphia

experienced its worst flood in more than 150 years on the morning of September 2, 2021 (US

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Department of Commerce, 2021). At least twelve locations on rivers and creeks in New Jersey

and Pennsylvania set a new record flood stage (Hernandez et al., 2021).

In addition to these floods, torrential rains, and winds provoked by Ida, destructive

tornadoes tore through Annapolis, Maryland; Mullica Hill, New Jersey; Trenton, New Jersey;

and other parts of the Delaware Valley. The Mullica Hill, New Jersey tornado was the first to be

rated at least “F/EF3”—the third most intense tornado on the Enhanced Fujita Scale with wind

speed between 136 and 165 mph associated with severe damage—in the state since October 18,

1990, according to NOAA's database (Ncei, 2021). According to the National Weather Service,

doppler radar detected debris from the tornado was lofted to at least 23,000 feet and may have

traveled 30 to 45 miles downstream (US Department of Commerce, 2021).

In May 2021, NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center forecasted that atmospheric and oceanic

conditions were conducive for an “above-normal Atlantic hurricane season” (Atlantic

Hurricane Season Shows No Signs of Slowing, 2021). Lead seasonal hurricane forecaster,

Matthew Rosencrans, suggested that “ENSO-neutral and La Nina support the conditions

associated with the ongoing high-activity era” and the likely factors that will affect 2021

seasonal storm activity include warmer-than-average sea surface temperatures in the tropical

Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, weaker tropical Atlantic trade winds, and an enhanced

west African monsoon (NOAA Predicts Another Active Atlantic Hurricane Season, 2021).
With humans' continuous release of planet-warming greenhouse gases, it is reasonable to assume

that warmer water temperatures would make more heat energy available and effectively increase

the potential for tropical cyclone activity (Berardelli, 2021). Not only are the frequency of

tropical activities forecasted to increase but also the intensity of these systems. According to a

2013 study, “the proportion of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes has increased at a rate of ~25–30 %

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per °C of global warming after accounting for analysis and observing system changes” (Holland

& Bruyegrave, 2013). The analysis suggests that following an initial climate increase in intense

hurricane proportions a saturation level will be reached beyond which any further global

warming will have little effect.

Hurricanes like Ida can be attributed as “rapid intensification” when an increase of wind

speed of at least 35 mph occurs in 24 hours and the forward motion of the storm is slowed

(Carrasco et al., 2014). According to a 2018 study examining the hurricane record in the Atlantic

basin from 1986 to 2015, the research found rapid intensification increased 4.4 mph per decade

(Balaguru et al., 2018). The researchers attribute most of the gains to a shift to the warmer stage

of the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (Figure 2).

Furthermore, the authors of a 2019 paper led by scientists at NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid

Dynamics Laboratory suggest that global warming also plays a role (Bhatia et al., 2019). Using

simulations from one of the most advanced climate models available, called HiFLOR, the team

of researchers concluded that recent increases in rapid intensification “is outside HiFLOR’s

estimate of expected internal climate variability which suggests the model’s depiction of climate

oscillations like the AMO cannot explain the observed trend.” Human-caused warming

significantly increases extreme tropical cyclone intensification rates in the HiFLOR model
(Bhatia et al., 2019). Moreover, anthropogenic climate change may be prompting more intense

Post-Tropical Cyclone disasters. Precipitation rates are projected to increase due to enhanced

atmospheric moisture associated with global warming (Knutson et al., 2021).

Apart from greenhouse warming, other human influences conceivably could have

contributed to recent observed increases in Atlantic hurricanes. For example, a 2006 research

study hypothesizes that a reduction in aerosol-induced cooling over the Atlantic in recent

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decades may have contributed to the enhanced warming of the tropical North Atlantic, relative to

global mean temperature (Mann & Emanuel, 2011). However, the cause or causes of the recent

enhanced warming of the Atlantic, relative to other tropical basins, and its effect on Atlantic

tropical cyclones, remains highly uncertain (Villarini & Vecchi, 2013). A number of

anthropogenic and natural factors such as aerosols, greenhouse gases, volcanic activity, solar

variability, and internal climate variability must be considered as potential contributors, and the

science remains highly uncertain in these areas.

The Geophysical Fluid Dynamic Laboratory at NOAA predicts that over the course of the

twenty-first century, increases in tropical cyclone rainfall rates and the intensity of tropical

cyclone intensities globally will be seen (Global warming and Hurricanes, 2021). An increase in

the global proportion of tropical cyclones that reach Category 4 and 5 levels is forecasted due to

anthropogenic warming and climate – Ida, causing damages costing close to 50 billion dollars, is

a prime example of how this intense hurrican can impact people and infrastructure (Hernandez et

al., 2021).

What makes Hurricane Ida a particularly interesting case study for the future is that the

storm did not weaken rapidly after landfall, as meteorologists used to expect of tropical cyclones
and hurricanes. Instead, as the Royal Meteorological Society reports, Ida maintained Category 4

strength for six hours after landfall, which was possible because of the size of the storm and the

temperature of the ocean water it accumulated at sea (Chinchar & Gray, 2021).

While some may compare Ida to Hurricane Katrina, the most relevant comparable storm arrived

only one year prior: Ida is currently tied for landfall intensity in Louisiana with Hurricane Laura

of 2020 and the less recent Last Island Hurricane of 1856 (Bureau, 2021). This incidence

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clearly demonstrates the frightening yet dangerous trends of hurricane formation and devastation.

It can be expected to see more similar storms in the years to come.

The flood damage following Hurricane Ida may also have been exacerbated by global warming.

Floods are the most common and among the most deadly natural disasters in the United States.

As global warming continues to exacerbate sea level rise and extreme weather, our nation’s

floodplains are expected to grow by approximately 45 percent by the end of the century (Miller,

2021). The remnants of Hurricane Ida and flooding killed at least 30 people in New Jersey, more

than in any other state. It was New Jersey’s second-deadliest storm on record. Robert Kopp, a

climate scientist at Rutgers University who helped write a grim report on global warming

released last month by the United Nations, called Ida a “direct impact of climate change” and to

expect a “wetter future with more extreme weather events” (Rose, 2021).

As Earth’s climate has warmed, more frequent and more intense weather events have

both been observed around the world. Earth’s warmer, more moist atmosphere and warmer

oceans make it likely that the strongest hurricanes will be more intense, produce more rainfall,

affect new areas, and possibly be larger and longer-lived. In addition, sea level rise increases the

amount of seawater that is pushed onto shore during coastal storms, which, along with more
rainfall produced by the storms, can result in more destructive storm surges and flooding. While

global warming is likely making hurricanes more intense, the change in the number of hurricanes

each year is quite uncertain. Hurricane Ida is an exemplary model of future storms affected by

anthropogenic damage. Its destructive effects heed many pivotal lessons and urge a more

pressing commitment to reducing human-causing global warming.

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Works Cited

Auguste, D., & Lucci, S. (2021, September 5). Murphy reports 2 additional IDA-related deaths

in New Jersey, bringing total to 27. WHYY. Retrieved November 10, 2021, from

https://whyy.org/articles/murphy-reports-2-additional-ida-related-deaths-in-new-jersey-brin

ging-total-to-27/.

Balaguru, K., Foltz, G. R., & Leung, L. R. (2018). Increasing magnitude of hurricane rapid

intensification in the Central and eastern tropical atlantic. Geophysical Research Letters,

45(9), 4238–4247. https://doi.org/10.1029/2018gl077597

Berardelli, J. (2021, April 5). How Climate Change is Making Hurricanes More Dangerous. Yale

Climate Connections. Retrieved November 10, 2021, from

https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2019/07/how-climate-change-is-making-hurricanes-mor

e-dangerous/.

Bhatia, K. T., Vecchi, G. A., Knutson, T. R., Murakami, H., Kossin, J., Dixon, K. W., &

Whitlock, C. E. (2019). Recent increases in tropical cyclone intensification rates. Nature

Communications, 10(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-08471-z

Bureau, C. N. F. (2021, September 15). Hurricane Ida: Direct agricultural impacts and larger

implications of flooding. American Farm Bureau Federation - The Voice of Agriculture.

Retrieved November 10, 2021, from

https://www.fb.org/market-intel/hurricane-ida-direct-agricultural-impacts-and-larger-implic

ations-of-floodi.

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Carrasco, C. A., Landsea, C. W., & Lin, Y.-L. (2014). The influence of tropical cyclone size

on its intensification. Weather and Forecasting, 29(3), 582–590.

https://doi.org/10.1175/waf-d-13-00092.1

Chinchar, A., & Gray, J. (2021, September 2). The Impacts of Hurricane Ida. RMetS. Retrieved

November 10, 2021, from https://www.rmets.org/metmatters/impacts-hurricane-ida.

City of New Orleans. (2021). Storm Surge and Coastal Flooding. Storm Surge - NOLA

Ready. Retrieved November 9, 2021, from

https://ready.nola.gov/hazard-mitigation/hazards/storm-surge-and-coastal-flooding/.

Diaz, J. (2021, August 31). These Images Show Just How Bad Hurricane Ida Hit Louisiana's

Coastline. NPR. Retrieved November 9, 2021, from

https://www.npr.org/2021/08/31/1032737199/images-louisiana-hurricane-ida.

Elliott, D. (2021, September 2). Tens of thousands still don't have power after Hurricane Ida as

evacuations continue. NPR. Retrieved November 10, 2021, from

https://www.npr.org/2021/09/02/1033727602/tens-of-thousands-still-dont-have-power-after

-hurricane-ida-as-evacuations-conti.
Hernandez, J., Wang, H. L., & Mann, B. (2021, September 4). Stunned by Ida, the northeast

begins to recover and worry about the next storm. NPR. Retrieved November 10, 2021,

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https://www.npr.org/2021/09/04/1034330641/hurricane-ida-northeast-flooding-storm-new

york-jersey-basements.

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Holland, G., & Bruyegrave, C. L. (2013, March 15). Recent intense hurricane response to global

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https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00382-013-1713-0.

Knutson, T. R., Smith, A. J. P., Hsieh, T.-L., Sun, J., Vecchi, G., & Chung, M. V. (2021,

October 5). Climate change is probably increasing the intensity of tropical cyclones.

Climate change is probably increasing the intensity of tropical cyclones | NOAA

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https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-probably-inc

reasing-intensity-tropical-cyclones.

Mann, M. E., & Emanuel, K. A. (2011). Atlantic hurricane trends linked to climate change. Eos,

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https://aecom.com/fema-climate-change-report/.

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Shows No Signs of Slowing. Atlantic hurricane season shows no signs of slowing | National

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National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. (2021, August 9). Global warming and

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Appendix
Figure 1: Hurricane Ida’s path and storm categorizations through the Atlantic Ocean from its
formation on August 26, 2021 to the effects of its remnants experienced in the Northeast until
September 1, 2021. (Source: The Weather Channel, 2021)

Figure 2: The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) Index is an ongoing series of long-duration
changes in the sea surface temperature of the North Atlantic Ocean, with cool and
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warm phases that may last for 20-40 years at a time and a difference of about 1°F between
extremes. Because our earth is currently in a warm stage in the AMO index, researchers argue
that this may account for the increasing rapid intensification and frequency of hurricanes
(Balaguru et al., 2018).
(Source: NCAR | Climate Data Guide)