Major Hurricane Ike?

Ike has rapidly dropped its pressure today, down to a current 944 mb. However, the winds have not yet caught up to the pressure drop. The NHC's discussion talked about the possibility of the tight eyewall breaking down overnight as the system moves over a cool eddy of water in the Gulf. If this occurred, the storm would quickly weaken back to near 950 mb, but would still be enough to jump the storm to a major category 3 hurricane. If the eyewall keeps its structure through the night, explosive convection should continue and the storm could be a 'weak' (funny eh?) category 4 hurricane by morning! This would be a very bad sign for the future of this storm, as still another two days over warm waters are forecasted.

Ike will likely make landfall as a major hurricane along the Texas coast. If the eyewall holds the structure through the night, the storm will likely be a Category 4 hurricane...if not stronger. If the eyewall breaks down, I expect no more than a mid-range Cat 3. A lot will depend on its life through tonight.

The storm has slowed down considerably today, which will be a major factor in its final landfall location. The trough, which is forecasted unanimously by the models to pull Ike to the north, will be approaching Texas on late Fri into Saturday. With Ike's slower motion, it wont reach the coast as quickly as the models had originally been predicting, and thus had been predicting an impact with Texas further south, possibly south of Corpus Christi. Now the slower motion has resulted in a model trend to the north, now north of Corpus and possibly as far north as Galveston. If you can imagine that this storm holds its eyewall together tonight and goes towards Galveston...it is a bad scenario. Right now we can only hope for the moderate shear to infiltrate the eyewall tonight before the storm really gets its act together and end up holding the storm back, just like with Gustav.

I think we will likely have a Category 4 hurricane make landfall just south of Galveston...My friend Greg Nordstrom is headed down to Galveston to be in the middle of the storm. His blog is linked on the right (LDCT blog). I wouldn't go down there if you payed me a million dollars.