At noon Central Standard Time on November 9, 2009, the center of Tropical Storm Ida was roughly 185 kilometers (115 miles) south-southeast of the mouth of the Mississippi River, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center. Forty-five minutes earlier, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite took this picture of the Gulf of Mexico. The center of the storm appears southeast of the Mississippi River Delta, and storm clouds graze Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida.
As of noon Central Standard Time on November 9, Ida had maximum sustained winds near 110 kilometers (70 miles) per hour, with higher gusts. Forecasters expected the storm to weaken as it approached the coast, but also to bring heavy rains to the southeastern United States.
NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team. Caption by Michon Scott, NASA Earth Observatory.
