Stalled Ida Claims at Least 5 Lives Along Atlantic Coast
Nov. 13, 2009 – Communities along the U.S. Atlantic Coast are suffering the effects of highs tides and roiling seas as the remnants of Tropical Storm Ida continues to erode beaches and flood local areas from the Carolinas north into New York and New Jersey, claiming at least five lives in the process.
Meteorologists say a lower pressure system over New England is causing the remnants of Ida to stall over the mid-Atlantic region, enabling high seas to continually erode protective beaches and barrier islands over an extensive area.
The storm has claimed at least five lives in three states, and the U.S. Coast Guard has ceased searching for three fishermen from New Jersey whose vessel sank during the storm Wednesday evening. A falling pine tree reportedly killed an elderly North Carolina resident while standing in his yard, a 36-year-old surfer was drowned in New York City and three motorists were killed in weather-related accidents in Virginia.
The deaths bring the total caused by the storm to more than 150 since it first made landfall as a hurricane in Central America last week.
Hurricane Ida killed an estimated 144 people in El Salvador, but the deadly storm weakened into a tropical storm as it landed in Alabama earlier this week, becoming likely the last Atlantic storm to make landfall in the United States during what has been one of the calmest storm seasons in recent history.
Hurricane Ida peaked at Category 2 status on the Saffir-Simpson scale with sustained winds of up to 110 mph as it brushed past Central America over the weekend, drenching the mountainous region with torrential rains and causing mudslides, flooding and other natural disasters that claimed a reported 144 lives in El Salvador.
As the storm continued into the Gulf of Mexico, oil companies evacuated endangered offshore oil-production facilities, shutting down nearly 30 percent of Gulf oil rigs as the storm passed and inflicted only minimal damage.
Ida is the second tropical storm to make landfall in the United States this year. Tropical Storm Claudette in August landed in the Florida panhandle region but caused little damage. Hurricane Bill in August claimed two lives as it bypassed the United States en route to Canada. Despite not landing in the United States, the hurricane created strong seas that drowned a 7-year-old girl in Maine and a 54-year-old man in Florida who attempted to bodysurf as the storm passed by the Sunshine State.
Mostly due to a strong El Nino event, the peak of the 2009 Atlantic hurricane season passed without a single major storm or hurricane making landfall in the United States and only moderately affecting other areas where weakened tropical storms have made landfall. An El Nino is an unusual warming of waters in the Pacific Ocean that creates varying upper-level winds capable of decapitating large tropical storms and preventing hurricane formation.
Thus far, the 2009 storm season has been the least active in more than a decade, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami. The Atlantic storm season generally runs from June through November and has been much calmer than predicted.
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