Ike Update - 8am Wednesday

The latest update on Ike as of 8am has the storm still at category 1 strength moving northwest at 8mph. The latest satellite imagery shows lots of central dense overcast around the center which would tend to suggest that Ike is getting ready to really start to strengthen. Right now Ike is currently forecast by the NHC to make landfall along the middle or upper Texas coast as a major cat 3 or cat 4 hurricane late Friday or early Saturday morning.

Below is a summary of a convo I had last night with a good friend and 30 year seasoned tropical forecaster here in Houston...

I am concerned that county officials are not taking this storm seriously. We are looking at a setup almost identical to Rita in 2005 and there does not seem to be much concern. Rita was forecast to hit on Saturday morning like Ike, but on the Wednesday before Rita was to hit near or just south of Matagorda Bay, we were already in full evacuation.

Mean while the people near the TX/LA border were thankful that the storm was forecast to hit well down the coast from them.

Ike is very likely going to be a Cat 3-4 when it hits the mid (or upper) Texas coast early Saturday morning. It's size means that squalls will begin impacting the upper to middle coast Friday morning. That leaves only today and tomorrow for evacuations. I can tell you this, if Ike deviates from the forecast track then it's far more likely to move inland north of the current projection than south. And only a TINY shift in timing of the turn, and a shift to the east side of Matagorda Bay, will mean a potential catastrophe here in the Houston-Galveston area.

If I lived in a surge zone near Galveston Bay I'd be prepared to leave and I'd get out before the hasty evacuation is called for tomorrow. Maybe we'll get lucky and NOW the forecast track is perfect. Yeah, maybe. But if the forecast is wrong, then we are looking at a very serious situation.
Again, we won't know for sure Ike isn't going to make a direct hit on Freeport/Galveston until during the day on Friday. We won't know today, we won't really know for sure tomorrow either.

I sure hope the current forecast is dead on, but I fear it isn't. Statistics over the past 10 years (from a study by Lance Wood at the Houston/Galveston NWS) show that 74% of the time, in the Gulf, the hurricanes track right of the forecast track.

Ok, back to the data...

The 00z models continue to be in good agreement in a landfall just south of Matagorda Bay, somewhere between Corpus and Rockport; however the ECMWF has actually shifted up to just north of Matagorda Bay. This would be a good model to watch as it has an excellent track history of being able to capture the long term synoptic scale motions and I would put a good bit of weight behind this model...something that the NHC has been doing recently.

What is concerning is that Ike is currently moving a couple hours slower than the forecast track...something that will be needed in order to see that northerly turn prior to landfall. If this trend continues then we could see models possibly try and shift further up the coast. Again, it is still a bit early to really boost confidence in any one scenario, but this will be a trend worth watching.