Hurricane Ike has weaken to a 80mph Category 1 as it has made its way across eastern Cuba... The trend of Ike has continued to be move more west and unfortunately for the US is not going to go over a lot more land until it gets to the western tip of Cuba... Ike crossed Cuba fairly quickly and because of how fast Ike crossed Cuba, the core doesn't look near as bad as I thought it would... Of course its been disrupted but honestly considering the fact that it has moved across the mountainous part of Cuba I'm actually fairly surprised by the look of it this afternoon... To me this is a bad sign that Ike won't have near the problems it could have had redeveloping... Don't get me wrong, it's going to be tough for the next few days, but with the amount of time it will have over the Gulf, I personally think Ike will redevelop into a major hurricane before a likely landfall in Texas...
The NHC track thinks Ike will start to take a wnw track here soon... On satellite imagery you can clearly see that Ike has not taken that northward motion yet... This leads me to go even a little west of the current NHC track, taking Ike over the western and northern edge of the Isle of Youth... This is not a huge difference but any continued motion west could play a big difference in the end game for Ike... 12z model runs all showed Ike striking Texas, with the furthest north being the 12z Canadian having Ike making landfall near the Texas/Louisiana border... 18z early track has come even more south and west... Looking at the current motion of Ike I'm going to have to agree... I think my forecast of Corpus Christi is looking fairly good right now but I have to say that if the westward trend of Ike continues, it could make landfall as far south as Brownsville, TX... Right now I think that's probably a little too far south, but the trend is taking it that way...
While this westward trend is very good news for the northern Gulf coast, it's very bad news for Texas and the eventually strength of Ike... I have been saying it all year in the Gulf, but the more west Ike travels the stronger it will be... Of course you have the obvious reason of it having more time over water, but the main reason is that water is not only warmer than the northern Gulf, it's most importantly deeper warmer water... The heat potential is very high and again max potential shows you this... Also you have a fairly large warm eddy just off the coast of southern Texas as well.. While this eddy is not as large as the loops current, it's still plenty big enough to allow Ike to explode the last day before landfall... Again of course we still don't know how much dry air and wind shear will play into all of this, but the POTENTIAL is there for a deadly strike along the southern Texas coast... Right now I'm sticking with a landfall near Corpus Christi as a strong Cat-3, even though a Cat-4 could easily happen... One thing I will say is I really believe that if Ike heads towards Corpus Christi south, we will be looking at a strengthening hurricane at landfall, which will will make a BIG difference!!! Of course it's still a long way out, but with what I have seen with the core today, the more western movement, and the warm deep water ahead, I'm very worried that we are looking at a major hurricane striking southern Texas next Saturday at the minimum!!!
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