Yup. I’ve got them too.
But the 10:00am update is out, and the upshot is that the intensity predictions at landfall have not gone up.
The forecast isn’t all good news, of course. Although Hurricane Ike hasn’t strengthened from a Cat 2, the pressure is low — usually an indicator of a more intense storm. The Hurricane Center is leaving plenty of room for error in their intensity forecast, and it’s going to be interesting to see whether those winds manage to catch up to the pressure. Furthermore… on the current track, we’re just to the NE of the eye projection, putting us on the most immediate “dirty side”.
It’s starting to seem less likely, though, that Ike will hit at anything stronger than a Cat 3. Here’s what the SciGuy has to say about that:
Although there is not much difference between a strong Category 2 and a weak Category 3 hurricane, there is an immense difference in the amount of damage that such a storm would cause in comparison to a Category 4 hurricane. The official prediction is 120 mph, a strong Category 3 hurricane.
Nothing to sneeze at, obviously, but far from worst case scenario.
I’m probably going to jump in the car shortly and drive around a bit to see what people are up to in my immediate area.
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Update: Jeff Masters at Weather Underground has a pretty good description of what’s going on with Ike, relative to the pressure vs. wind speed. And he has some rather alarming data for coastal residents about the storm surge. Go read his whole post, but here’s a small excerpt:
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.
This, right here, is why people who are not in danger from the surge need to let the coastal residents get out.
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