Why is it that Hurricane Ida went two directions at once?

It didn't split at all. It went up the Mississippi valley, cut across Tennessee and came out on the Atlantic side. Same storm, it just didn't break up in the east central US. This is not even remotely rare. From what I saw the biggest problem in Md was a few spin up F-0 tornadoes and maybe some flooding in places prone to flood. Rockville and Annapolis got hit. My niece in Ridge didn't see much of anything. Evidently West B'more dodged the bullet too.

On Fri, 03 Sep 2021 11:14:43 -0400, micky posted for all of us to digest...

How about all that space between your ears?

This may be easier for Micky to visualize

One storm that traveled about 1400 miles across the US after coming ashore in Louisiana.

tinyurl.com/kkhzennk

I was allowing travel time, to get to NJ and NY, which is farther than La.

You're site says "So what exactly happened between Sunday morning, when Ida came ashore, and Monday evening, when it dissipated into a tropical depression?"

Dissipated into a tropical depression! But Greg's two posts say it went on to NJ. No wonder I'm not sure what happened.

Greg even has a map, and unless he drew it himself, that it exists is pretty convincing, but I've never heard of a tropical storom that can survive that long over land and that picks up steam when it gets to the east coast. Is such behaviour new?

I can't remember if it made any news between La. and NJ. Tennessee sticks in my mind but that might be for Corona.

But you two have given answers and I appreciate that.

You're not talking about the natural rotation that has hurricane winds blowing two ways at once?

The tornadoes spun up when it interacted with weather you already had on the east coast. Other than that it was just rain. I guess you folks are not prepared for 3" of rain in a day. It happens here a lot. I lived in Maryland for the remnants of Agnes in the 70s and we had 3 feet of water flowing over the road to my house in a place nobody would have dreamed would be wet. Those people never considered flood insurance but a few houses flooded. Fortunately I understood water in your basement and I bought a house on top of the hill with a walk out basement door (at grade).

You should check your numbers. Some areas of New Jersey and NYC received more than 3" of rain in an *hour* and it didn't stop there.

Rainfall totals in some areas of Jersey approached 9" from Wednesday evening into Thursday morning. 5" to 7" was very common.

Just a tad more than your quoted '3" of rain in a day.'

OK Our coverage wasn't that great here. They were more interested in the tornadoes. Otherwise it was just "rain with a name", not really news for us. Irma dropped 13" here in less than a day and that was on top of 12" of rain over the few days before from a "no name" storm. We are still hearing a lot about Southern Louisiana. The east coast fell off our newscast's radar. They had a little blurb about a broken gas line up there somewhere but only because fire and explosions always play well on TV.

If fire and explosion play well, you'd think that death should dominate.

You are hearing about the south with "only" 13 dead, but not about the east coast, with 48 dead?

One good outcome, the floor of the dugouts got a much needed rinse:

The two are not mutually exclusive. Shortly after coming ashore in Louisiana, IDA downgraded to a tropical storm and continued northeast to NJ, MA etc. The hurricane trackers at the various weather websites will show the track and downgrade. By the time it got here to NJ, I'm not sure what it was at that point, I think most likely it was not even a tropical storm at that point, because there wasn't enough sustained high winds, so it probably was back to just a tropical depression, if that.

I haven't seen anyone saying it picked up steam, except you.

???

On Fri, 3 Sep 2021 16:08:54 -0700 (PDT), Dean Hoffman posted for all of us to digest...

The only wind blowing is between micks ears.

On Fri, 03 Sep 2021 21:30:33 -0400, snipped-for-privacy@aol.com posted for all of us to digest...

Where did the Gremlin go?

On Sat, 4 Sep 2021 05:24:26 -0700 (PDT), Marilyn Manson posted for all of us to digest...

So did the subway in NYC. DeBlasio dropped his doobie & Cheetos & headed out with a straw...

The NOAA storm categories are based on wind speed but water ends up killing more people. You had folks who thought hiding in the basement was the right thing to do. We won't know the death count here until the power comes back on because the clean up and generators kill as many people as storms. (electrocutions and CO poisoning mostly, but some injuries from cutting trees and building collapse).

I sold it for $500.