Nov. 6 (Bloomberg) -- Storm Ida weakened to a tropical depression after washing ashore and dumping as much as 20 inches (50 centimeters) of rain over higher areas of Honduras and Nicaragua, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.

Ida’s maximum sustained winds dropped to 35 mph today from 75 mph yesterday. The center of the storm, which made landfall as a hurricane in Nicaragua yesterday, was located about 55 miles (88 kilometers) west of Cabo Gracias a Dios, at the border of Nicaragua and Honduras, the Miami-based weather agency said in an advisory issued at 10 a.m. local time.

Rain from the storm is starting to ease up in eastern Nicaragua and eastern Honduras as the storm heads north at about 7 mph, although it’s expected to produce another 1 to 2 inches of precipitation in higher elevations, the center said. Ida should move across eastern Honduras today and into the northwestern Caribbean Sea tonight.

The storm is forecast to intensify once it moves back over water, the center said. Ida is expected to turn toward the north-northwest tomorrow and bring rain to eastern parts of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula.

Disagreement on Forecast

“There continues to be a large disagreement among the models on how much intensification to expect with Ida,” NHC hurricane specialists Eric Blake and James Franklin said in a forecast discussion. “The statistical guidance generally shows a rather modest amount of restrengthening, while the regional hurricane models suggest that Ida will become a hurricane again.”

The agency’s five-day prediction shows the system moving over the western Caribbean Sea as a tropical storm and emerging on Nov. 9 into the Gulf of Mexico, home to about a quarter of U.S. oil production. By Nov. 11, the eye of the storm is predicted to be about 200 miles south of the Florida Panhandle.

A second storm is developing in the southern Gulf of Mexico and will bring strong winds and high seas to the coasts of Louisiana and Texas, said Joe Bastardi, a expert senior meteorologist for private forecaster AccuWeather.com.

“This is going to be a three-day problem at least,” Bastardi said in a statement. “Seas 15 to 20 feet and a 200- mile-wide area of strong gale-force winds 40 to 50 mph will mean a likely disruption of normal oil production in the northwest Gulf this weekend.”

Floods and Mud

Rain from Ida inundated parts of northern and eastern Honduras and Nicaragua, where people were warned of life- threatening flash floods and mudslides.

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega decreed a national alert as Ida approached, General Mario Perezcassar, head of civil defense, said in a telephone interview. Some 4,000 people in Nicaragua were evacuated to shelters, said Spanish news agency EFE.

Honduran emergency workers were on alert, according to EFE. Neighboring Costa Rica also declared a state of emergency as flooding destroyed several homes along its northern Caribbean coast, the country’s national emergency agency said in an e- mailed statement.

Oil and natural-gas producers with platforms in the Gulf of Mexico haven’t yet made plans to evacuate workers as Ida approaches, according to a helicopter company that provides storm rescues for the energy industry.

“We’re monitoring it and our clients are monitoring it, but there are no evacuation plans right now,” said Danny Holder, Gulf of Mexico business unit director for Air Logistics, which has about 140 rescue helicopters in the region.

Crude oil tumbled after the Labor Department reported that the U.S. unemployment rate surged to a 26-year high, undermining speculation that fuel consumption will rebound next year. Crude oil for December delivery fell $2.79, or 3.5 percent, to $76.83 a barrel as of 1:13 p.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Prices are up 72 percent this year.

To contact the reporter on this story: Chris Dolmetsch in New York at cdolmetsch@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: November 6, 2009 14:42 EST