Did I say northern Texas?

I guess I should have said central to southern Texas!! The models have completely shifted from LA to southern Texas in one day, which tells me the weakness that was forecasted has almost completely gone away, and the trough (which will move in later in the week) has slowed down. Ike is definitely headed towards Texas, now the task is to pinpoint a landfall location.

The greatest clustering is from Brownsville to Corpus Christi. The main difference between a northern track and a southern track is the potency and timing of the strong front/trough which will move through the central US this week. The front is forecasted to move through the upper plains on Wednesday into Wednesday night. By Wednesday night Ike will be in the southern Gulf moving west towards the TX/Mexico border. It will likely be intensifying over very warm Gulf waters after having re-organized its core over the Caribbean. (Gustav was greatly disturbed moving over the same section of western Cuba, but I don't expect this with Ike because the shear is so much lower).

Ike should be able to reach Cat 3/4 hurricane strength while in the central to western Gulf. This means the storm will be strong enough to easily feel any weakness to the north of the system. The GFDL, GFS, and NOGAPS forecast Ike to make landfall near Brownsville. The European, HWRF, and CMC forecast closer to Corpus Christi. The interesting thing here is that the GFS is usually the model which forecasts a stronger trough, but it is the one forecasting a further south location. The European has continued to be relatively consistent with its forecast, only moving a bit from the Houston area to Corpus. The CMC and European have been the two most consistently furthest west models all along with Ike, and now they are the ones furthest north. There is a lot to think about with this storm.

So the question is, how strong, in comparison to the models, is the trough?

Here are the current upper-air conditions at 500 mb:

European 0Z model initialization:

GFS 6Z model initialization:



What do you notice? Both models are reasonably close to the upper-air data! The GFS then slows this trough down and stalls it in the southwest US. The European is a bit stronger, pushing the trough a bit further east, pulling Ike towards Corpus in 4-5 days. So considering these variables, knowing model biases and situations, it seems reasonable to think Ike will not be picked up by the trough...but with the model flip-flop (European now further north/east than GFS) it makes me want to think the European is on to something. The European will often indicate when a trough is stronger than the GFS is thinking, definitely when the European coincides with the CMC (which it does). Its very tough, but if I had to put out a guess right now I would say Corpus, likely just to the south of the city. However, I think we will know more in about 24 hours, when the trough in the Pacific northwest moves further south and we get an idea of its strength. By then we should be able to pick up on where Ike will be making landfall.