Hurricane Ike – Gulf of Mexico 3
Position: 28.7 N 94.5 W. [11 PM CDT 0400 UTC]
Movement: Northwest [315°] near 12 mph.
Maximum sustained winds: 110 mph [175 kph].
Wind Gusts: 130 mph.
Hurricane Wind Radius: 120 miles [195 km].
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 275 miles [445 km].
Minimum central pressure: 952 mb ↓.
It is 45 miles South-Southeast of Galveston, Texas with sustained hurricane force winds coming ashore.
Music break: Galveston, Glen Campbell with the Jimmy Webb song.
Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.
Dr. Jeff Masters on Ike’s surge:
Hurricane Ike is closing in on Texas, and stands poised to become one of the most damaging hurricanes of all time. Despite Ike’s rated Category 2 strength, the hurricane is much larger and more powerful than Category 5 Katrina or Category 5 Rita. The storm surge from Ike could rival Katrina’s, inundating a 200-mile stretch of coast from Galveston to Cameron, Louisiana with waters over 15 feet high. This massive storm surge is due to the exceptional size of Ike. According to the latest wind field estimate (Figure 1), the diameter of Ike’s tropical storm and hurricane force winds are 550 and 240 miles, respectively. For comparison, Katrina numbers at landfall were 440 and 210 miles, respectively.
4 comments
Doesn’t look good for our friends on the Gulf Coast. Looks like they are taking it seriously so human life will be spared. I’m traveling back to Atlanta this afternoon and right now it looks as if even flights from the North East are being affected. Might be a less than optimal travel day.
Obviously, Houston airport will shut down, New Orleans, probably Dalles-Fort Worth, so there will be some shuffling going on.
It’s the coast that is definitely in danger, and it doesn’t make any difference at this point if the storm weakens to a tropical storm at landfall, the surge has already been created and is headed that way. It will hit both Louisiana and Texas coasts.
I’m livestreaming the CBS affiliate in Houston here at noontime out in the Upper Left Corner (which will no doubt endear me in the hearts of my IT folks, but it’s Friday and nobody’s around), and there has already been storm surge flooding that has trapped people along the coast west of Galveston over 12 hours out from landfall. A lot of the “man-on-the-street'” interviews with rescued long-time residents usually end with “I never dreamed it would come up this fast”…
Their weather guy is trying put it as plainly as possible: “This will be a Category 2 hurricane with a Category 4 storm surge…”
We had beach roads under water from the wave action two days ago when it was 350 to 400 miles away. Katrina came ashore about 200 miles to the East and we got an 8-foot surge.
It isn’t the wind, it’s the water.