Hurricane Ida seemed to come from nowhere. It began in the Caribbean on Wednesday and, fuelled by warm seas, rapidly turned into a hurricane shortly before hitting the remote Miskito coast of Nicaragua. As the storm passed over land into Honduras it was starved of warm sea water and weakened.

There is some confusion, though, about the impact of Ida on El Salvador. Ida passed to the east of El Salvador and was not directly responsible for the rains, floods and landslides there, which were set off by a separate storm system from the Pacific.

But Ida’s presence in the Caribbean may have helped to draw the Pacific storm towards El Salvador. Ida emerged from Honduras and rejuvenated itself as a hurricane in the warm waters of the Caribbean before sweeping into the Gulf of Mexico. It is now a dangerous storm again, and is expected to hit the Gulf coast of the US today or tomorrow. Powerful storm surges up to 1.8m (6ft) high with high waves are expected, and rainfall up to 20cm (8in).

The surprising thing is that this year’s hurricane season had been very quiet. A growing El Niño in the Pacific killed off many storms with high-altitude winds that ripped hurricanes apart. And it is also near the official end of the hurricane season, on November 30. But some late season hurricanes can be very destructive. In October 1998 Hurricane Mitch dropped rainfalls over Nicaragua and Honduras that killed almost 20,000 people.