Late season hurricane

Hurricane Ida formed (and dissipated) in the past two days over the far southwestern corner of the Caribbean Sea. I was personally surprised to see formation (especially because NHC outlooks really weren't hyping the system too much... perhaps because of its proximity to land?); I just happened to look at NHC on Wednesday while waiting for SO244 to begin, and noticed that they had upgraded the system to TD11 with good prospects for it to strengthen before making landfall 24 hrs later. Evidently the environmental factors were really favorable for strengthening because TD11 quickly was classified TS Ida, and a few hours later Hurricane Ida. See attached image collage of Ida at peak intensity/landfall.

On a related point, I've noticed that NHC no longer feels constrained to let its operational products conform to either a rigid timeline. I mean that this year it seems NHC doesn't classify (or upgrade) a TC, either to start advisories as a depression or to move a TC to a higher intensity level, at the standard advisory times (03, 09, 15, and 21 UTC), instead preferring to wait for the system to clearly be a TC (and thus, at least operationally, missing the TD stage). Furthermore, special advisory products seem to becoming more common as NHC refrains from making big changes in TC intensity while waiting for Aircraft Reconnaissance. Anyway, these are some of my observations of the 2009 Atlantic season.