Ida makes landfall, Julian forms, TD10 forms

As expected, Ida did indeed rapidly intensify in the Gulf of Mexico, and strengthened from a tropical depression on Thursday morning to nearly a Category 5 hurricane early Sunday afternoon.  Peak winds at landfall were 150 mph, and it's too early to know the aftermath because it is still coming inland as I write this.

Ida is among the strongest hurricanes to ever make landfall in Louisiana, and it the eyewall will pass just west of New Orleans and possibly right over Baton Rouge. We know without a doubt that it will be bad... very bad.  Today is the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's landfall in roughly the same location, and although Ida is smaller, it's stronger.  

Aside from the wind and storm surge damage, Ida is going to dump a LOT of rain, likely much more than Katrina did, in eastern LA.  Then it will leave a swath of heavy rain along its track through the country over the next five days.

On Saturday night, Tropical Depression 11 formed in the north-central Atlantic, and that was upgraded to Tropical Storm Julian just twelve hours later.  Julian is the season's tenth named storm, and formed 25 days ahead of the average date of the 10th named storm formation.  It is forecast to track to the northeast, then turn north into the cold north Atlantic... not a threat to land at all.

Tropical Depression 10 formed on Saturday morning and is expected to become the season's eleventh named storm, Kate, on Monday.  It is subject to the same generally steering patterns as Julian, so it's also going to track north and remain far away from land.

Finally, for now, there's a strong easterly wave still centered over western Africa that has a lot of support in the model guidance for development in the coming days.  If that one becomes a tropical storm, it would be the season's twelfth: Larry. The long-range outlook indicates that it could become a fairly strong storm, but as of now, the odds favor it recuring to the north well before reaching the Lesser Antilles.

In terms of ACE (Accumulated Cyclone Energy), the 2021 season is at about 153% of average for the date, using the past 50 years as the baseline.  Recent seasons that were this high by this point in the season were 2020, 2012, 2008, 2005, 2004, etc.

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