Southcentral

Weather Underground midday recap for Sunday, November 08, 2009.

Hurricane Ida remained the biggest weather story of the nation on Sunday as the system became positioned between the Yucatan Peninsula and Cuba. This late season tropical storm strengthened to a Category 2 hurricane during it's northwestward trek through the Yucatan Channel. Ida is expected to remain at Category 2 strength as it enters the Gulf of Mexico on Monday and will affect the Gulf Coast with dangerous weather conditions through the mid-week. For more information on this storm, please see http://www.wunderground.com/tropical/.

Only a few areas of active weather developed throughout the country on Sunday. In the South, low pressure in the western Gulf of Mexico sparked numerous showers, locally heavy rainfall, and isolated thunderstorms in southeastern Texas and southern Louisiana. The majority of Louisiana and portions of eastern Texas were placed under Flood Advisories and Warnings due to increasing precipitation through the afternoon.

In the North, a weak disturbance moved through the Upper Midwest and produced a line of rain showers from southeastern North Dakota through northern Minnesota.

Meanwhile, another cool and showery day of weather developed in the Pacific Northwest. Showers from the eastern Pacific spread onshore into Washington and Oregon during the morning and afternoon hours. The heaviest amounts precipitation fell across the north Oregon Cascades. The remainder of the West kept dry with comfortable weather conditions due to weak high pressure that extended across California and into the Central Basin.

Temperatures in the Lower 48 states Sunday have ranged from a morning low of 12 degrees at Truckee-Tahoe, Calif. to a midday high of 87 degrees at Naples, Fla.