This is a “sticky” post that remains at top so that you can watch the progess of Ike. Click images for full size or the link below them for an animated loop.
Click for loop Click for radar loop Click for loop Click for full size
UPDATE:
Latest Buoy Observations near Hurricane Ike
Zoomable map of Ike Radar loop of Ike
Galveston Hurricane of 1900
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2000/galveston/
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/HAW2/english/history.shtml#galveston
Cat 4, Corpus Christi, Thursday.
My first go at hurricanes.
Seems like the eye is invisible like Hanna’s.
This storm will get about 1/10 the coverage of Gustav since it will miss “[Snip – pejorative for New Orleans]”.
Mike Bryant (04:41:09) :
Seems like the eye is invisible like Hanna’s.
That’s covered by “Central Dense Overcast.” If I were me, I’d suggest that it’s a sign the storm is suffering from dry air ingestion, but I might also wait until a visible light image was available.
All the best hurricanes have a tight clear eye. The water vapor loop showed the eye fade over the last several hours, it had looked pretty good after leaving Cuba.
The latest image (1145UT) may show the CDO clearing.
“It appears that every model missed the slight jog north.”
I don’t pretend to know how this thing is being directed by the patterns around it but the loops don’t make it appear headed west of Galveston.
Here’s an interesting site for seeing the different forecast models:
http://www.stormpulse.com/
Just click the “forecasting On” radio button. The page provides distances to major cities and other info as well.
Now if there was just a way of having the historic forecasts display/update and comparing them to the actual track as the storm advances. I’m assuming someone does that for a living, but it’d be interesting to see them update on screen.
Anyone know if there’s an historic accuracy rating for the different forecasting models?
RE: a hypercane!
“Many know this as a special class of hurricane that feeds off the sucrose that is absorbed after passing over sugar cane fields…”
I had some middle school students who were like this the day after Halloween – very scary.
Looks like Houston is now Bulls-eye for Ike. Plot hours 60 and 66 on a map and see where it is!! It may even creep a little more right than this, but Ike should make landfall near Houston vicinity.
ATTENTION…NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER
NCEP COUPLED GFDL HURRICANE MODEL FORECAST MADE FOR
HURRICANE IKE 09L
INITIAL TIME 12Z SEP 10
DISCLAIMER … THIS INFORMATION IS PROVIDED AS GUIDANCE. IT
REQUIRES INTERPRETATION BY HURRICANE SPECIALISTS AND SHOULD
NOT BE CONSIDERED AS A FINAL PRODUCT. PLEASE SEE THE TPC/NHC
OFFICIAL FORECAST.
FORECAST STORM POSITION
HOUR LATITUDE LONGITUDE HEADING/SPEED(KT)
0 23.8 85.3 300./ 7.0
6 24.0 86.0 287./ 6.6
12 24.3 86.5 306./ 5.4
18 25.0 87.2 310./ 9.1
24 25.4 88.1 300./ 9.1
30 25.8 89.1 291./10.1
36 26.3 90.3 291./11.4
42 26.6 91.5 286./11.7
48 27.2 92.6 298./10.9
54 28.0 93.7 305./12.3
60 28.9 94.7 314./13.3
66 30.0 95.6 319./12.8
72 31.1 96.2 333./12.6
78 32.7 96.2 0./15.3
84 34.2 95.6 19./16.6
90 36.2 94.1 38./23.1
96 38.2 91.3 54./30.2
102 39.9 87.4 67./34.1
108 41.4 82.1 73./43.1
Loop Current images for Ike hurricane:
Tropical Cyclone Heat Potential
Sea Height Anomaly
Depth 26.C Isotherm
Sea Surface Temperature
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/phod/cyclone/data/go.html
Plus a lot of images in one place:
http://media.myfoxtampabay.com/myfoxhurricane/
Regards
Bill Nye identifying CO2 as a pollutant gives me pause. He seems generally informed on science. Is there a root cause that is not cognitive dissonance or some conspiracy variant?
Perhaps the root cause is that many scientists don’t grasp the problems with modeling because it is a specialized discipline and thus not widely understood. Therefore, these folks should be open to changing their view if it can be explained to them clearly….
Anthony,
Thanks for showing more of the posts, now if you could show more of the most recent comments, that would be really fine.
Plus I bet it would make your numbers go up even more.
Thanks,
Mike
Pete (16:32:30) :
I think Nye is completely obsessed on the green “end” of the spectrum.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/07/10/bill-nye-ed-begley-compet_n_111834.html
Mike Bryant (18:25:58) :
Ok, I want to play to. I will guess it hits north of Houston. I say cat 2 by end of day tomorrow.
Disclaimer:
I know absolutely nothing about hurricane forecasting. If anything in this product confuses you, please ignore it.
OK, I got the CAT 2 correct. Now hoping for north of Houston. I live between Houston and Corpus Christi, very close to Port Lavaca.
Houston, we have a problem…
Here is a cool “toy” to play with when storms and hurricanes develop:
StormPulse
If you put your mouse on a city it gives you the distance from the
hurricane. Two sad anomalies: 1) You can expand it world-wide, but it
doesn’t show other storm systems (or things are pretty dead) 2) It
depicts the Arctic Ocean as all broken up and circumnavigable.
But it IS a cool toy…great graphics on someone’s part.
Question for those who might know:
I’ve been checking the models regularly, (and not just for Ike), and the XTRP model seems to be munged up. It’s good at drawing nothing but straight lines, and has been doing so for about a month…maybe longer. What’s going on?
Mike86,
You can plot storm positions vs. the forecasts for those positions at
http://dss.ucar.edu/cgi-bin/datasets/tcplot
It’s still a work in progress, and forecast comparison plots are only available for the N. Atlantic for 2008 right now.
I’m working on back-filling to 1995 the forecast data for N. Atlantic and Eastern N. Pacific cyclones. When that is done, all forecast data will be available for plotting and download.
What happened to Josephine?
For those living on the central and northern TX coast, even the SW Louisiana coast,you really need to leave. This storm is already showing characteristics of a stronger storm than it’s Cat rating. It’s wind field is bigger than Katrina’s already and is forecast to intensify even more.
Here’s some important info. This comes from Jeff Masters blog at Weather Underground.
The amount of water Ike has put in motion is about 50% greater than what Katrina did, and thus we can expect Ike’s storm surge damage will be similar to or greater than Katrina’s. The way we can estimate this damage potential is to compute the total energy of Ike’s surface winds (kinetic energy). To do this, we must look at how strong the winds are, and factor in the areal coverage of these winds. Thus, we compute the Integrated Kinetic Energy (IKE) by squaring the velocity of the wind and summing over all regions of the hurricane with tropical storm force winds or higher. This “Integrated Kinetic Energy” was recently proposed by Dr. Mark Powell of NOAA’s Hurricane Research Division as a better measure of the destructive power of a hurricane’s storm surge than the usual Category 1-5 Saffir-Simpson scale. For example, Hurricane Katrina hit Mississippi as a strong Category 3 hurricane, yet its storm surge was more characteristic of a Category 5 storm. Dr. Powell came up with a new scale to rate potential storm surge damage based on IKE (not to be confused with Hurricane Ike!) The new scale ranges from 1-6. Katrina and Wilma at their peaks both earned a 5.1 on this scale. At 9:30am EDT this morning, Ike earned a 5.6 on this scale, the highest kinetic energy of any Atlantic storm in the past 40 years.
“Ike is now larger than Katrina was, both in its radius of tropical storm force winds–275 miles–and in it radius of hurricane force winds–115 miles. For comparison, Katrina’s tropical storm and hurricane force winds extended out 230 and 105 miles, respectively. Ike’s huge wind field has put an extraordinarily large volume of ocean water in motion. When this swirling column of water hits the shallow waters of the Continental Shelf, it will be be forced up into a large storm surge which will probably rival the massive storm surge of Hurricane Carla of 1961”
Please LEAVE, and tell family and friends to LEAVE this area. This thing is BIG. DO NOT GO BY THE CAT RATING ALONE. Again, it is showing higher rating characteristics and is forecast to slowly intensify.
Best to be safe than sorry.
Brian D,
Great advice. In the last half hour, it is believed that Ike finally completed its eye wall replacement cycle that may have been the longest in history. In that time, it strengthened mightily, but the inner structure has prevented the winds from increasing above cat 2. However, if indeed it has completed its cycle, we may be lucky in that Ike’s winds will increase and alert everyone to the monster that he really is. Ike is so much more dangerous than Katrina ever was because he seems not to be as powerful. As your article concludes, he has the largest potential energy of any hurricane in the last 40 years. That says a LOT.
Storm surge is going to kill a lot of people here. Early indications place it on par with Carla and the 1900 hurricane
I would like to to share a quote from a post on a weather forum.
As a nurse, and past Fl. resident, and worked relief after all the storms from Andrew to Wilma.
This is not a test. If you live through the storm you will then be faced with two weeks or more without power. That means, no water, no A/c, no medical services, no ATM, no gas can be pumped no stores open, and stink all around you with no sanitation available. It is beyond miserable. You will get dehydrated and probably get dysentery because you can’t keep clean. All it takes is your dirty hand to your mouth one time. Your sick, with no one to help.
The storm surge is going to be amazing and the power behind all that moving water will leave nothing standing, the 100 mph winds between tall buildings will double in strength. Do not even consider staying if you live in the CONE OF FEAR! Get out, and get out now. If you have people you know in the area, call them and BEG them to leave. Even if you’re wrong, give them permission to laugh at you for the rest of your lives. I can’t express enough concern here.
This is really serious stuff. Not only will the storms wrath be ugly, but it’ll be bad in the aftermath as well. Please just leave.
Let’s pray for the folks along the Texas Gulf Coast. This one is headed my way, but I live far enough inland (central AR) that I’m not usually worried about myself, or family that live here. But I have family in Texas, and my son’s in-laws are in Beaumont. I’m hoping they sit this out up in Dallas with my son.
I was surprised that the current forecast has Ike still at tropical storm levels when it exits Texas and moves into Arkansas. That means we’re likely to see even stronger winds than we saw with Gustav. But for us, the real worry of these things is always the potential flooding from torrential rains. We got 8-11 inches here locally out of Gustav. If Ike is as bad as it is looking to be, and comes into Arkansas the way the latest track has it, we could be in for even more. I’ve got my waders ready at the back door.
Basil,
Given the dispersed structure and resultant large wind field, I would certainly believe you will see tropical storm force winds in AR. It will take a while for Ike to wind down, IMHO.
Ike Cometh…
While it is appropriate today to spend as much time as possible in reflection and thoughts on what happened seven years ago over Shanksville, PA, at the Pentagon and in New York City, it is also important to note a disaster pending in the Gulf of Mex…..
Man it’s growing big…