Ida began the day as a minimal hurricane but was downgraded to a tropical storm as cooler water in the northern Gulf of Mexico sapped some of its strength. Late Monday, it carried maximum sustained winds near 70 mph and was expected to bring heavy rain and possible flooding in low-lying areas as early as Tuesday.

Five years ago, Hurricane Ivan blasted ashore here and caused an estimated $14 billion in damage in Alabama, the Florida Panhandle and elsewhere. Against that backdrop, Ida doesn't worry too many people here.

"We'll just get rain, nothing to really be concerned about, just a normal storm," said Oscar Reed, 64, who works at an automobile repair shop. "You have stronger winds out of a thunderstorm than you'll get out of this system."

"Open Ida," read the sign outside King Neptune's Seafood Restaurant near the beach. Inside, the staff was folding napkins and setting tables for Monday night's dinner crowd. "It's not a powerful enough storm to run us off," said Tony Sawyer, 37, whose family has owned the restaurant for 16 years. "We aren't scared."

Residents' memories of Ivan might explain why even this much weaker storm prompted residents to drift into City Hall on Monday afternoon to pick up automobile windshield stickers that would allow them to return home if there was a mandatory evacuation, which Police Chief Arthur Bourne said is unlikely.

"This time of year, our summer season is over, so there aren't a lot of tourists in town," Bourne said. "The folks we're dealing with mostly are permanent residents and our permanent residents know what to do."

"You can't ever take these storms for granted," said John Stewart, 28, a construction worker picking up stickers.

Ida started out as the third hurricane of this year's Atlantic season, which ends Dec. 1.

Hurricanes that hit the USA in November are "extremely unusual," says Dennis Feltgen, a meteorologist with the National Hurricane Center in Miami. He said that since records began in 1851, only five hurricanes have made U.S. landfall in November. The most recent was Hurricane Kate, on Nov. 21, 1985, which hit near Mexico Beach, Fla.