Missing most of the Cuba that would have weakened him considerably, Ike is still a pretty good looking hurricane and I expect will be impressing us even more by Wednesday evening when we expect the C4L Tracking Center will be really humming in expectation of a landfall that still remains fairly vague.
Like we discussed with Gustav, the Loop Current Eddy is going to play a role along with warmer temps and minimal shear; everything is in favor of Ike becoming a major hurricane.
The models are now showing Ike as a Cat 1 in Texas at landfall, but we are leaning toward a major hurricane at landfall based on water temps and surrounding conditions.
Like we discussed with Gustav, the Loop Current Eddy is going to play a role along with warmer temps and minimal shear; everything is in favor of Ike becoming a major hurricane.
The models are now showing Ike as a Cat 1 in Texas at landfall, but we are leaning toward a major hurricane at landfall based on water temps and surrounding conditions.
As for landfall location, I am not sold on the Texas targets being shown just yet; there is a loop current and a loop current eddy side by side that Ike will be encountering that I still think will shift him a tad bit northward than the models are showing. Texas should hope I am right as the coastline the models are forecasting as Ike’s target are extremely susceptible to large storm surge. I remember looking at the animated models for storm surge in Galveston during 2005 and was amazed at the projected flooding a simple hurricane can cause there. 9 out of 10 people that die in a hurricane are killed by storm surges. In 1900, the Galveston Hurricane struck as a Cat 4 and killed between 6000 and 12,000 people making it the deadliest hurricane to ever hit the United States.
There is in existence film of this storm, reportedly the OLDEST motion picture film of an occurrence like this in existence today.
Another cool fact? It was filmed by Thomas Edison’s employees!
