Ida caused a stripe of death and destruction from Louisiana to New York City.2021's hurricane season will likely go down as one of the costliest seasons on record.Rapid changes in hurricane intensity and rainfall rates set records.
The 2021 Atlantic Basin hurricane season was filled with moments that won’t soon be forgotten by those who faced its worst along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts.
But there were a few things that stood out during a long, destructive six-month stretch. Here are the 10 most memorable moments from the 2021 hurricane season:
Hurricane Ida was undoubtedly the most impactful storm of the year. From Louisiana to Long Island, the storm is blamed for more than .
But on the night of Sept. 1, Ida brought extremely heavy rainfall into the Philadelphia, Trenton and New York City metro areas, resulting in catastrophic flooding in the Northeast. Of the more than 90 deaths blamed on Ida, , according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s more than 1,000 miles from Ida's landfall in Louisiana.
Danny Hong shows how high the water reached as he shows the damage in his basement apartment on 153rd St. in the Flushing neighborhood of the Queens borough of New York, Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021
(AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)
The remnants of Ida combined forces with a frontal system as it entered the Northeast, which led to extreme rainfall rates, tornadoes and widespread flooding. New York City's Central Park picked up 3.15 inches of rainfall in a single hour on the evening of Sept. 1. That's the heaviest one-hour rainfall on record there. Total rainfall for Sept. 1 was 7.13 inches, making it New York City's fifth-wettest day on record dating to 1869.
This led to flash flooding on the streets of many cities along the Interstate 95 corridor from Pennsylvania to Connecticut. Forty-six people drowned in New Jersey and New York alone; Many of those lives lost were in their own homes and cars, according to the CDC.
(MORE: Detailed Impacts from Ida's Remnants around the Northeast)
In some spots, both tornadoes and flash flooding caused issues. One county, in particular, had what may have been the country’s worst weather in 2021 – we head there next.
At one point, on the evening of Sept. 1 just after 7:00 p.m., a portion of eastern Bucks County, Pennsylvania – located near Trenton, New Jersey – was in both a flash flood emergency and a tornado emergency. These are two of the highest levels of alert that the National Weather Service has in its arsenal. Both alerts are meant to give a heads up for unfolding deadly weather conditions and are rare alerts. This was one of the first times that these alerts were co-located simultaneously.
At least one person died in flash flooding in Bucks County, and the combined impacts of flooding and tornadoes caused in eastern Pennsylvania and western/southern New Jersey.
Dozens of other tornado and flash flood alerts were issued from Philadelphia to New York, including the first flash flood emergency in New York City, which resulted in the destruction and loss of life mentioned above in No. 1.
(MORE: Our Hurricane Season Roundup)
As if Louisiana hasn't had enough in recent years, Hurricane Ida came ashore in southeastern Louisiana in late August.
Ida made the season’s most intense landfall near Port Fourchon, Louisiana, on the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s historic Louisiana landfall. Maximum sustained winds were estimated to be around 150 mph at the time of landfall.
Jeremy Hodges walks on a family storage unit in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida, Monday, Aug. 30, 2021, in Houma, Louisiana.
(AP Photo/David J. Phillip)
, and nearly 40% of homes were destroyed.
In New Orleans, the power grid was mangled to completely downed. Parts of the city had power outages that lasted nearly a week. More than , many of whom also lost drinking water in the hours and days following Hurricane Ida’s landfall.
High-resolution satellite images showing city lights taken before (Aug. 9, 2021) and after (Aug. 31, 2021) Hurricane Ida reveal the magnitude of power outages in the New Orleans metro area.
(NASA)
At least 16 deaths are blamed on the loss of electricity, a late summer heat wave that pushed heat indexes toward the century mark, and people trying to run generators in their homes. Hyperthermia (overheating) and carbon monoxide poisoning is blamed for 10 and six of those deaths, respectively. These deaths are in addition to those caused by water and wind.
In a first-of-its-kind scientific advancement, a private company sent a 23-foot-long sailing drone (or saildrone, for short) out into the middle of the Atlantic, and into the middle of Category 4 Hurricane Sam.
On Sept. 30, it captured the first-ever pictures from the ocean’s surface inside a major hurricane. This is a milestone in hurricane research because the air-ocean boundary is where the heat and moisture of the ocean lift into the atmosphere and power the wind, clouds and precipitation miles higher into the stratosphere. Studying this interaction could offer clues into how future storms intensify.
caused a scare in Tampa Bay 100 years after the most recent Category 3-plus landfall in the area. Elsa, which was at times forecast to make a direct landfall in Tampa Bay as a tropical storm, intensified into a minor Cat. 1 hurricane just offshore before hitting the state's Big Bend as a tropical storm.
The rest of the season brought a pair of storms, but no major systems of concern for much of the state.
Tropical storms and Mindy each brought some winds, storm surge and rainfall flooding to the panhandle and northern Florida. But in South Florida and most of the Atlantic coast, the 2021 season was a welcomed respite.
For two months this hurricane season, four storms crisscrossed through the Northeast, bringing heavy rainfall, tornadoes and gusty winds.
Elsa, Fred, Henri and, of course, Ida all took tracks through the Northeast, dropping feet of rain in some spots. Fred and Henri brought a one-two punch of heavy rain just a week apart. Ida, with an intensity of its own, followed a week after Henri soaked the region, leading to catastrophic flooding.
Many locations from the Appalachians to southern New England were running a that culminated in Ida’s impacts in the Northeast.
Of the eight tropical storms and hurricanes to make landfall in the Lower 48 this season, half caused at least $1 billion in damage. Elsa, Fred, Ida and Nicholas caused at , mostly caused by Hurricane Ida.
Last year’s hurricane season had seven billion-dollar tropical cyclone disasters, but storms in 2020 caused relatively less damage, with around $42.7 billion reported by NOAA.
On Aug. 20-21, Hurricane Grace became an unsung terror in the Bay of Campeche by rapidly intensifying from a Category 1 hurricane to the strongest hurricane ever recorded in the region – a Category 3 with sustained winds of 125 mph as it made landfall in Mexico’s Veracruz state.
While storms coming from the Gulf of Mexico frequently weaken before reaching Mexico City, Grace reached metropolitan Mexico City at near hurricane strength, although the strongest winds were likely over the water. Mudslides and flooding were reported across Mexico and tens of thousands of homes and buildings were damaged. Hundreds of thousands lost power.
(MORE: Hurricane Grace Recap)
And a bonus top moment of 2021 came a few days later as Grace redeveloped into Tropical Storm Marty in the Pacific, just south of Baja California.
The National Hurricane Center forecast a mammoth change in intensity with Hurricane Ida leading up to its landfall in Louisiana, and the storm went on to intensify from a tropical depression to a Category 4 hurricane in just three days. The forecast ended up being one of the steepest in history – and yet it was underdone. But the forecast offered unprecedented time to prepare for such a storm that developed so close to home.
Four other hurricanes rapidly intensified this hurricane season; Elsa, Grace, Larry and Sam all intensified by at least 35 mph in 24 hours at one point in their lifespan. Of the hurricanes that formed this year, only Henri and Nicholas did not rapidly intensify.
On the contrary, this season also had seven "shorties" – storms that lasted less than two days as a tropical storm. "Shorties" are increasingly frequent due to better detection with better technology and an overall increase in tropical storm development.
The season started off with a bang. After 2020, we thought it might be impossible to get another "(storm name) is the earliest Xth storm in history" tweet from Dr. Phil Klotzbach, but 2021 had one up its sleeve. formed on July 1, beating the old record for the earliest fifth named storm set just last year by Edouard, which formed on July 6.
This followed formation in May, marking the seventh consecutive early start to the hurricane season. Both Claudette and Danny moved inland as tropical storms in the South, mainly as rainmakers, in June.
(MORE: Hurricane Nicholas Recap)
Typically, when the "N" storm (this year's was Nicholas) forms at the peak of hurricane season with La Niña in play, you’d expect a busy end to hurricane season, but after mid-September, not one tropical storm or hurricane touched American soil.
Six storms formed, including the monster but water-loving Hurricane Sam, in the next few weeks following Nicholas. Then, we had to wait until Halloween for a "fish" named Wanda to form in the north Atlantic and finish the season’s name list. None of these storms had major impacts, although Wanda’s low-pressure system did impact the Northeast as a nor’easter.
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