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As Hurricane Ida closed off the coast of Louisiana on Sunday morning, meteorologists were stunned to see the storm strengthen so quickly.

When Dale Eck, head of forecast operations for the Americas at IBM, went to bed Saturday night, Ida’s winds were blowing at 105 miles per hour, which is Category 2 wind speed. The next morning saw winds increase to 150 mph, strong enough for a Category 4 classification.

“I have a stinging feeling in my stomach,” he said. “This was one of the worst-case scenarios.”

The storm quickly morphed from an alarming disturbance in the Atlantic Ocean to the most devastating storm to hit Louisiana since Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Before Ida became a named storm, forecasters found what they thought was another thunderstorm cluster or disturbance moving westward over the Atlantic, said Ben Gelber, a meteorologist at WCMH-TV in Columbus, Ohio.

This disturbance was quickly realized to be unique, Mr Eck said, because it was floating in an area where the wind was not fast enough to drive the ocean’s heat away from the system. This allowed heat to stay inside the system, creating the perfect humid environment for the disturbance to intensify into a tropical storm.

“It would be difficult to find a more convenient route for this rapid strengthening than that of Ida,” said Robert Henson, an independent meteorologist and journalist for Yale Climate Connections.

Ida arrived in Cuba as a Category 1 hurricane on Friday. tornado classifications. From there, forecasters knew the storm would be severe, and the only question was how badly it would get.

From Saturday to Sunday, a wintry of weather conditions turned Ida into a devastating Category 4 storm: Its winds quickly reached 150 mph; A high-pressure wave from the southeastern United States directed the storm over Louisiana; and the waters in the Gulf of Mexico were unusually hot and very deep, meaning that there was a lot of water that Ida could shake up to sustain itself.

Meteorologist Benjamin Schott of the National Weather Service in New Orleans said the fact that the water is still warm is cause for concern that the storm could continue to strengthen to a low Category 5 rating.

On Twitter, meteorologists across the country have raised the alarm about how quickly Ida has morphed into a colossal threat.

“I desperately wish the prediction had not come true,” he said. Rick KnabbA hurricane expert at The Weather Channel, Dr.

Eric BlakeA senior hurricane expert at the National Hurricane Center said, “I’m sick to my stomach watching this hurricane. It’s a very sober morning.”