The 2021 Atlantic hurricane season will officially come to an end on Tuesday, Nov. 30, 2021.

The season stretched from May 22 through Nov. 30.

The active season brought 14 tropical storms, three Category 1 hurricanes with winds up to 95 mph, two Category 3 hurricanes with winds nearly 129 mph, and two powerful Category 4 hurricanes with winds near 156 mph.

This left a total of 21 storms being named throughout the entire season. Nine of these named storms made landfall in the United States.

Hurricane Ida was the most powerful storm to make landfall in the United States in 2021 with maximum winds topping out at 150 mph. Ida made landfall at Port Fourchon, Louisiana, at 11:55 a.m. on Aug. 29.

The 2021 hurricane season will end as the third most active on record.

PARADIS, La. —

Hurricane Ida left the Nazios living in tents in their front yard. They slept on inflatable mattresses that got cold at night. They cooked in a fire pit. They waited to see if state officials would approve their request for temporary housing. It lasted about two months, as of Friday.

But what a difference a day makes. The family from Paradis, Louisiana, woke up Saturday morning in a trailer with a queen bed and four bunks.

"It was a good sleep," Hypolite Nazio said with a laugh. "It feels great to be out of the cold and into something warm and to take a hot shower."

The Nazios have Matt Rookard to thank. He saw Friday news coverage from sister station WDSU of their living situation, then he gave them a call. By around 8:30 Friday night, he planted a trailer near where the tents had stood.

"Seeing pictures of what they've been living in, that mini-tent city they created, it tells you they're self-reliant — that they're trying," he said. "That makes your heart break that much more."

Rookard is with the Terrebonne Economic Development Foundation, a Houma, Louisiana-based nonprofit group of business leaders. The foundation started buying trailers weeks ago and began distributing them Tuesday. Its organizers have delivered nine trailers so far.

"It's a leg up," he said, noting that families can either keep the units or sell them for extra money. "It's an asset to provide for their family, and it takes a boulder off their shoulder."

The foundation doesn't take applications for trailers. Instead, organizers find families they think need one, and they deliver.

Rookard says the group has enough money to donate about 70 trailers. But he hopes to surpass that goal, citing many families still displaced.

"The thought that we have our friends and neighbors living this way in 2021 in America is absolutely heartbreaking," he said. "I don't think people realize outside Louisiana what it still looks like in many neighborhoods."

The Nazios plan to stay in their trailer while they rebuild their house, which Hypolite's grandfather built more than 40 years ago.

"There have been generations here," Hypolite said. "That's not something you just uproot and leave behind."

NEW ORLEANS —

Community members in Louisiana are coming together to take care of one another following the devastation left behind by Hurricane Ida.

Pennington Hebert, 5, lost all of his toys in the storm.

"I was crying that I didn't have my toys," Pennington told sister station WDSU.

So many people donated new toys, gift cards, and even a refrigerator to the family following WDSU's story.

"If it hadn't been for y'all, none of this would have been possible or would have happened. It's because of y'all that we have any of this. It's so wonderful," Kathryn Hebert, Pennington's mother, said.

The need for supplies is still massive in the communities hit hardest by Ida.

Leaders have set up a resource center for people in need.

"To see the heartbreak in their eyes and the tears running down the side their face, really tugs at my heart," said Ricky Templet, a councilman for Louisiana's Jefferson Parish.

"I must have had about 5 feet of water and a foot of mud — that's the hardest part, the mud," said Shirley Nagel, who has lived in Lafitte, Louisiana, her entire life.

Nagel lost everything. She has no flood insurance but said she is fortunate because she has her family.

"Have faith and courage. Ask God to help them to have the strength and courage to go through this. It takes a lot, but they can do it. Have faith. It will come back. It will all come back. I know we can do it," Nagel said.

As for Pennington, he said he knows his community can rebuild too. He plans on sharing all of his new toys.

"The world is the best," Pennington said. " I'm going to give them toys, too. They will say 'thank you' because I'm going to give them toys."

The second half of hurricane season is here and there have already been 15 named storms to keep hurricane hunters busy. But have you ever noticed hurricane hunters' flight patterns shown by meteorologists on TV look like random, odd shapes?

Those seemingly random flight patterns may look like boxes or stars, but they serve specific purposes for each individual storm.

We ended 2020 with a record-breaking 30 named storms in the Atlantic basin and if this season is anything like last year, we have a long way to go.

Hurricane hunters don't fly away from these storms like commercial airlines do. They fly directly into them, but they don't just fly into and around the storms randomly. There is a method to the madness.

There are two distinctive groups of hurricane hunters, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the U.S. Air Force Reserve (USAF). Both organizations fly missions into tropical disturbances in order to record invaluable data used by forecasters at the National Hurricane Center (NHC).

For Hurricane hunters, there are two main types of missions flown, fixed and invest.

Fixed missions

Fixed missions are designated for systems that meet tropical cyclone qualifications, such as tropical depressions, tropical storms and hurricanes. The main objectives are to mark the center of circulation, monitor winds speeds and pressure changes and other variables that are tricky for satellites in space to measure in full detail.

For fixed missions, 'Alpha' is the most common flight pattern used to collect data in a tropical cyclone.

"The Alpha pattern is the standard profile we fly for fix missions so it's the one people are most familiar with seeing from us," Maj. Jeremy DeHart, meteorologist and aerial reconnaissance weather officer with the Air Force Reserve's 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron, said. "The pattern consists of two legs flown at intercardinal directions, and when complete, looks a lot like the Greek Alpha symbol when including the crossleg."

Cardinal directions are the standard points on a compass: north, south, east, and west. Intercardinal directions are the diagonal points in between: northeast, southeast, southwest, and northwest.

Interestingly, the bigger, stronger storms tend to be the "easier" ones to fly in.

"From my perspective as the onboard meteorologist, the Alpha pattern is the "easiest" to fly. Because we normally fly those on stronger storms, there's not a lot of question where the storm center is," DeHart said. "The flights can be rough of course, but at the end of the day we just go fly through the storm center, collect the data, and send it to NHC."

Invest missions

The primary objective of an invest mission is to determine if a system meets the definition of a tropical cyclone; storms that do not yet have a name or any real tropical structure characteristics.

For invest missions, the NHC will often send estimated coordinates of where they believe the center of circulation is, which is where the missions will target for their starting point.

However, invest missions by nature have to be a bit more flexible for flight patterns, simply because there are so many unknowns with these types of storms.

"We never know what we're going to find, yet we always have to be thinking two or three steps ahead. So that really makes us need to think about the meteorology [in each particular storm]," DeHart said. "Is it a closed low or an open wave? Maybe it's closed but just elongated? Is it battling shear? Are there several smaller swirls competing to be the main circulation center? Weak storms and invests can be very tricky and require a lot of thinking on our toes."

Air Force Hurricane Hunters have a variety of flight patterns to choose from for invest missions: X, Delta, and Box, just to name a few.

DeHart explains the missions are ideal for the weaker, more uncertain storms. While the X pattern may resemble the Alpha pattern, it is flown at much lower altitudes, usually around 500 to 1,000 feet.

"Once a system becomes a tropical storm or hurricane, the hurricane hunters begin flying at higher altitudes, ranging from 5,000 to 10,000 feet depending on the severity of the storm," said Jessica Kendziorek, public affairs operations chief with the USAF 403rd Wing.

Flight levels for the Delta and Box patterns are usually at or below 5,000 ft absolute altitude.

"The Delta and Box patterns are similar in that we'll fly around the periphery of the forecast center seeing if we can observe winds in all four quadrants of the storm that would indicate a closed circulation. If we find a closed circulation, we can confidently go [find] the center; if not, we'll continue the mission in 'invest mode,'" DeHart said.

NOAA focuses on research

NOAA Hurricane Hunters also fly operational fixed and invest missions (though the names may be different), but they usually have more research-oriented objectives. They fly many unique flight patterns, with different types of aircraft, depending on what type of mission is assigned.

Hurricane hunters also fly a third type of mission, which the Air Force rarely flies, according to DeHart, called synoptic missions.

For fixed missions, NOAA often flies a Figure 4, Rotated Figure 4 pattern, or a Butterfly pattern.

"The Butterfly and Figure 4 patterns flown by the WP-3D through the storm are typically the ones used to [find] the center of circulation," said Jonathan Shannon, public affairs specialist for the NOAA Aircraft Operations Center Office of Marine and Aviation Operations.

The Rotated Figure 4 pattern is as it sounds; the Figure 4 pattern turned on the side.

"The goal with every flight is to gather data all around the center of the storm, and those patterns allow us to efficiently fly through a storm's various quadrants," Nick Underwood, NOAA Hurricane Hunter, said. "This data helps with predicting a storm's intensity, as well as determining exactly where the center is."

For invest missions, the Lawnmower and Square Spiral patterns are flown, to determine if there are actual tropical characteristics associated with the area in which they are investigating.

"The Lawnmower Pattern allows us to map out a large area when we don't have a center to aim for," Paul Flaherty, science branch chief at NOAA's Aircraft Operations Center, said. "Once we are able to map a full circulation (usually by finding a west wind), we'll shift back to Figure 4's based on that newly identified center position."

The Square Spiral pattern is a survey mission meant to supply observations on the structure and characteristics including information about the vortex center, if it exists.

There is a unique third type of mission flight pattern, often used to sample the surrounding atmosphere which helps forecasters know the direction the storm is likely to go.

The Star pattern focuses on a scan of the outer edges of the system. The closely related Star-2 pattern also does an outer span of the system, while also adding in a circumference loop near the center of circulation.

Recently, NOAA's Gulfstream IV flew a Star-2 pattern around Hurricane Larry, to investigate outflow patterns from the storm and better determine where the storm was headed.

"The flight pattern you'll typically see from our Gulfstream IV is a circumnavigation of the storm itself, as well as sampling of the atmosphere around and ahead of the storm," Underwood said. "This data helps with predicting the storm's track."

Regardless of which entity is flying, the operational missions are the backbone for the National Hurricane Center, tasked with providing essential life-saving information about a storm.

The NHC takes the data and uses it to issue guidance and advisories to the public, so people know whether Elsa or Ida or Nicholas are still tropical storms or have become hurricanes.

HOUMA, La. — It’s deceptively beautiful at the end of another hot Louisiana day. Perhaps it’s a sort of apology from Mother Nature following Hurricane Ida. However, it's come too late, as gas is in short supply and desperation is starting to set in.

“We need help,” said resident Brandy Jones.

You could see the desperation on Jones’ face and hear it in her voice.

“We got hit the hardest, so you’d think they would have something for us, but they don’t have anything,” she explained.

Sitting outside a makeshift shelter in Houma, Louisiana, this mother, her 4-year-old child and their family have no place to go. Their home was left uninhabitable by Ida.

It could be weeks before this city of 30,000 people has power again.

Even the shelter here has no running water or air conditioning. It’s as hot outside as it is inside.

“I feel really pissed off, angry, you think this is our Parish. This is bad,” Jones said. “We asked, and nobody knows what’s the plan. They said they wasn’t prepared for this. How?”

Things are not much better for Brinson Sangste, who is living inside his car with his cat. He’s parked his car in the parking lot of the shelter here.

Sangste filled an extra tank of gas and packed some coolers with cooking supplies

“In that suitcase, I’ve got eight pairs of blue jeans and about 25 shirts,” he shared.

This is all he has now.

“Ah, it humbles yourself. You learn what you need what you don’t need,” he said.

Sangste lives in Dulac, Louisiana, a small, unreachable town 30 miles south of the shelter he’s now at. His town took a direct hit.

“There’s nothing, nothing. I almost didn’t come back,” he said.

For those without the means to leave, this is it. They battled a Category 4 hurricane, only to now be baking in nearly 100-degree weather with no air conditioning.

Those who are lucky enough to have generators, like Mary Guidry, are doing what they can to occupy the time.

“We’ve been picking up stuff all over, but some stuff you can’t pick up,” she said.

It may not seem like much, amidst the devastation, but people here have to start somewhere.

Even utility crews are beginning the painstakingly complex process of somehow getting the power grid across Southeast Louisiana back online.

People across the Gulf Coast are trying not to lose sight of what’s important, even though Ida has taken so much away.

Hurricane Ida made landfall in Louisiana on Sunday, exactly 16 years to the day after Hurricane Katrina slammed into the state and became the deadliest and costliest hurricane to hit the U.S. in recorded history.

Video above: Economic damage from Ida not as bad as feared

The two storms share some key similarities in terms of their date, strength, location and their destructive impact on the region's power grid and water systems. But the major hurricanes also have clear differences in their paths — and New Orleans and its rebuilt levees are different, too, from that fateful day 16 years ago that left over 1,800 people dead.

A day after Ida hit the state, here's an early look at how the two storms compare.

Their strength and path

Though both major hurricanes hit Louisiana, the two storms differ in clear meteorological ways and in their paths through the state.

Katrina first made landfall early on Aug. 29, 2005, as a Category 3 storm with maximum winds of about 125 mph near Buras, Louisiana, the National Hurricane Center said. It had been a Category 5 storm in the Gulf of Mexico and weakened significantly before making landfall, but that prior strength meant that it created a very high storm surge.

Katrina was also huge in geographic size, and hurricane-force winds stretched up to 110 miles from its center.

The storm brought hurricane conditions to Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, and dumped 8 to 12 inches of rain along its track. Importantly, Katrina caused major storm surge flooding 25 to 28 feet above normal tide levels along parts of the Mississippi coast, and storm surge flooding of 10 to 20 feet above normal tide levels along the southeastern Louisiana coast, according to the National Weather Service.

Ida, meanwhile, made landfall around midday Sunday as a Category 4 hurricane with winds of 150 mph near Port Fourchon, the NHC said. Ida had rapidly strengthened in the 24 hours leading up to landfall but was smaller in size than Katrina, and hurricane-force winds stretched only up to 45 miles from its center.

Ida also moved slower than Katrina. Ida traveled about 100 miles inland in the first 12 hours after landfall Sunday, while Katrina moved about 240 miles inland in its first 12 hours after landfall.

The two storms also differ in the path they took through Louisiana. Ida first made landfall at Port Fourchon, about 40 miles west-southwest of Buras, where Katrina first hit. Ida then moved into Louisiana west of New Orleans, while Katrina pushed east of the city in 2005.

Hurricanes spin in a counter-clockwise direction, and the eastern side of a hurricane has the strongest winds, so New Orleans experienced each storm differently. In 2005, Katrina passed east of New Orleans and Lake Pontchartrain, so its winds pushed water from the lake south into the city, causing more flooding.

This weekend, Ida passed to the west of the city, bringing stronger winds to New Orleans but also pushing the lake's water away from the city.

"I think that we're going to see the wind damage (with Ida) could be worse than Katrina," CNN meteorologist Judson Jones said.

The levees

The biggest difference between these two storms is that New Orleans and its vital levee system have been remade in the intervening years.

New Orleans sits partly below sea level south of Lake Pontchartrain and is already vulnerable to flooding. A complex system of levees, pumps, canals and floodwalls run by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers protects it from regular flooding.

Katrina was so catastrophic primarily because the very high storm surge overtopped the levee system in Orleans and St. Bernard parishes, leading to levee failures and breaches. Most of the breaches were due to erosion from overtopping, but a few breaches occurred before the waters even reached the top of the floodwalls, the NHC said in a post-storm analysis.

The failure of the levee system created extensive flooding and destroyed much of the city.

"Overall, about 80% of the city of New Orleans flooded, to varying depths up to about 20 ft, within a day or so after landfall of the eye," the NHC said.

Since then, the levee and pump system has been revamped to protect against another such failure.

It remains early, but as of midday Monday, the rebuilt levees have largely worked as designed. The Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority East said that its levees held and were not overtopped during Hurricane Ida. "There have been no issues with our pumps," the authority said. The New Orleans Flood Protection Authority also said the levee system functioned as designed.

Jefferson Parish assessor Tom Capella, who was chairman of the Jefferson Parish council in 2005 and remembers Katrina's devastation, said he had not heard of any such widespread flooding in the parish on Monday.

"As we sit here, if you're looking for the good news, the levees held," he said. "I'm looking out my window and there are shingles down, but I don't see the complete and utter devastation of 6 feet of water in people's houses like we had for Katrina."

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards told MSNBC on Monday that clean-up from Hurricane Ida will take a while, but the levee "performed extremely well."

"If we had to deal with a failed levee system this morning, it would be completely unimaginable and thank goodness that is not what we are dealing with today," he said.

Ramsey Green, New Orleans deputy chief administrative officer for infrastructure, emphasized the upgraded levee system on Saturday ahead of the storm.

"This is a different city than it was August 28, 2005, in terms of infrastructure and safety," he said at a news conference.

Green called the city's levee system "an unprecedentedly powerful protection for the city," which has three lines of defense: the coast, the wetlands and the levee system.

"I think from that perspective, we need to be comfortable and we need to know that we'll be in a much better place than we were 16 years ago," Green said.

"That said, if we have 10 to 20 inches of rain over an abbreviated period of time, we will see flooding. We don't know at this moment -- we see 15 to 20 inches over 48 hours or less, and we can handle it, depending on the event."

The power grid and water systems

Ida has not caused a catastrophic levee failure, but like Katrina, it still has caused severe damage to the region's power grid and water systems.

In particular, Ida had knocked out electricity for more than a million customers as of midday Monday, according to Poweroutage.US, a site that tracks outages. New Orleans City Council Member Joe Giarrusso said there are eight transmission lines into New Orleans and Jefferson Parish and all eight have been knocked out.

Entergy Louisiana, the company that provides power to 1.1 million customers in Louisiana, said it will likely take days to determine the damage and "far longer" to restore electrical transmission.

"The most dangerous part of a storm is often just after it has passed," Entergy said, because "downed power lines may still be energized."

The outages have also led to water issues, the Sewage and Water Board of New Orleans said Sunday. The board asked residents to limit water usage and said it is "experiencing challenges" keeping up with demand.

Capella, the Jefferson County assessor, said he's concerned that Ida knocked out power and has impacted the water treatment system. "It is clearly significant damage to the power grids and more importantly to the water system right now," he said Monday.

Ida also arrived during the COVID-19 pandemic, adding another variable to the recovery efforts.

Back in 2005, Katrina caused widespread power outages and left about three million people without electricity, including some for several weeks, according to the NHC. The storm also displaced more than a million people in the Gulf region.

The lack of power and water infamously created horrific conditions at a flooded Memorial Medical Center, where 45 bodies were eventually found. The total damage from Katrina was estimated to be $125 billion (or $176.3 billion in 2021 dollars), according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

In addition, cell service was down for a large swath of the region both during Katrina and in Ida.

"The communications here are similar to what it was after Katrina," Slidell Police Chief Randy Fandal said Monday. "The damages are not the same as Katrina but as far as the operations, communications, all cell phones, none of the cell phones are working, phone lines are not working, we have very limited communications ourselves."

Video above: Live coverage from WDSU in New Orleans

Hurricane Ida rapidly grew in strength early Sunday, becoming a dangerous Category 4 hurricane just hours before hitting the Louisiana coast while emergency officials in the region grappled with opening shelters for displaced evacuees despite the risks of spreading the coronavirus.

As Ida moved through some of the warmest ocean water in the world in the northern Gulf of Mexico, its top winds grew by 45 mph to 150 mph in five hours. The system was expected to make landfall Sunday afternoon, set to arrive on the exact date Hurricane Katrina ravaged Louisiana and Mississippi 16 years earlier.

Ida threatened a region already reeling from a resurgence of COVID-19 infections, thanks to low vaccination rates and the highly contagious delta variant.

New Orleans hospitals planned to ride out the storm with their beds nearly full, as similarly stressed hospitals elsewhere had little room for evacuated patients. And shelters for those fleeing their homes carried an added risk of becoming flashpoints for new infections.

On Grand Isle, where Ida appeared to be heading for landfall, the ocean steadily rose as increasingly bigger waves churned Sunday morning.

In New Orleans, where the worst weather is expected later, a light rain fell. Cars were parked on the median, which locals call neutral ground in New Orleans, because it's a few feet higher and can protect against potential flooding.

Ida intensified so swiftly that New Orleans officials said there was no time to organize a mandatory evacuation of its 390,000 residents. Mayor LaToya Cantrell urged residents to leave voluntarily. Those who stayed were warned to prepare for long power outages amid sweltering heat.

Nick Mosca was walking his dog, like most of those who were out.

“I’d like to be better prepared. There’s a few things I’m thinking we could have done. But this storm came pretty quick, so you only have the time you have," Mosca said.

Gov. John Bel Edwards vowed Saturday that Louisiana's “resilient and tough people” would weather the storm. He also noted shelters would operate with reduced capacities “to reflect the realities of COVID.”

Edwards said Louisiana officials were already working to find hotel rooms for many evacuees so that fewer had to stay in mass shelters. He noted that during last year's hurricane season, Louisiana found rooms for 20,000 people.

“So, we know how to do this,” Edwards said. “I hope and pray we don’t have to do it anywhere near that extent.”

In coastal Gulfport, Mississippi, a Red Cross shelter posted signs displaying directions for evacuees along with warnings about COVID-19. With skies still sunny, only a handful of people had shown up Saturday evening.

Shelter manager Barbara Casterlin said workers were required to wear face masks. Evacuees were encouraged to do the same. Anyone who refuses will be sent to an isolated area, she said, and so will people who are sick.

“We’re not checking vaccinations,” Casterlin said, “but we are doing temperature checks two or three times a day.”

President Joe Biden approved emergency declarations for Louisiana and Mississippi ahead of Ida's arrival.

Comparisons to the Aug. 29, 2005, landfall of Katrina weighed heavily on residents bracing for Ida. A Category 3 storm, Katrina was blamed for 1,800 deaths as it demolished oceanfront homes in Mississippi and caused levee breaches and catastrophic flooding in New Orleans.

Officials stressed that the levee and drainage systems protecting the city had been much improved since Katrina. But they cautioned flooding was still possible with up to 24 inches of rain forecast in some areas.

Edwards said 5,000 National Guard troops were being staged in 14 Louisiana parishes for search and rescue efforts. And 10,000 linemen were on standby to respond to electrical outages.

Ida posed a threat far beyond New Orleans. A hurricane warning was issued for nearly 200 miles of Louisiana’s coastline, from Intracoastal City south of Lafayette to the Mississippi state line. A tropical storm warning was extended to the Alabama-Florida line.

Meteorologist Jeff Masters, who flew hurricane missions for the government and founded Weather Underground, said Ida is forecast to move through “the just absolute worst place for a hurricane.”

The Interstate 10 corridor between New Orleans and Baton Rouge is a critical hub of the nation’s petrochemical industry, lined with oil refineries, natural gas terminals and chemical manufacturing plants. Entergy, Louisiana’s major electricity provider, operates two nuclear power plants along the Mississippi River.

A U.S. Energy Department map of oil and gas infrastructure shows scores of low-lying sites in the storm’s projected path that are listed as potentially vulnerable to flooding.