The first thing you need to know is that Ida will not impact the Texas coast. However, it may get into the Gulf by early next week and possibly head for the Gulf coast of Florida or the Florida panhandle by the end of next week.

The Hurricane Hunter plane check the storm out this afternoon and indeed found tropical storm force winds, which is why Ida was upgraded from a tropical depression to a storm. The forecast track shows Ida hugging the coasts of Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Honduras, bringing heavy rains to those areas. Then the system will briefly weaken to a tropical depression again and then re-form as a tropical storm in the still warm waters of the Western Caribbean by Monday:

A tropical system in November? Yes, its rare, but just last year, around this time, there was a powerful hurricane (Cat 5 Paloma) in the Caribbean. Check my previous blog entry for a map of November tropical storms.