Hurricane Ike Trends West...

Hurricane Ike is still a very powerful 135mph Cat-4 with a pressure of 945mb...  The movement is currently wnw at 14mph even though models show a gradual turn to the west, then wsw, before getting in the Bahamas...  From there things get tricky!!!  Unfortunately the trend of the models have been west over the last day!  The ridge is forecasted to be stronger which would mean a big threat for southern Florida!!!  Honestly this is still an EXTREMELY tough call even though I'm starting to lean more west as well...  Going with the typical right bias of the GFS, I really thought Hanna and Ike would pump the ridge enough to get Ike into Florida...  This morning I worried that because Hanna didn't develop like I thought it would have an affect on the path of Ike...  Whille I still believe if Hanna was a Cat-3, Ike would go even more west, it now looks like it's not going to matter as far as an impact on southern Florida...  Lets explore a few of the models to see what they think!

The GFDL actually brings Ike south of Miami and Keys...  Ironically the GFS takes Ike just east of Florida and then out to sea...  Again the GFDL is initialized off GFS model data so I find this werid...  I have to say that I will give the GFDL a lot of credit this season because even when the GFS is way too far right it hasn't...  Overall the GFDL's track has been very good this tropical season...  With that I think the GFDL needs to be a warning to the people South Florida that a western track is VERY possible...

The HWRF is also showing Ike south of Miami and unfortunately in this run destroying Key West with a 908mb hurricane....  I'm more concerned with the track of the HWRF then the strength because this particular models has been overestimating tropical cyclone strength all season!  However again this is lining up with the more west trend and should just increase concerns of a southern Florida strike!  Its actually even more south/west then the 12z run earlier today!

The European also shows a MUCH more western track...  It's track is actually very similar to Hurricane Rita in 2005...  It takes Ike south of the Keys and into Western Louisiana...  In the past the European has been my favorite model for the tropics...  This year though it hasn't done near as well as it did in the past, especially in 04/05...  While I don't think Ike will go that far west in the Gulf it still shows more agreement on a westward track...  This is not to say this can't happen, but all I'm taking from this at this point is a bigger threat for Florida then the Carolinas...

The Canadian like the GFS and NOGAPS keeps Ike of the coast of Florida...  The GFS take Ike out to sea where the Canadian and NOGAPS keeps Ike just off shore of Florida, slowing it down, and then accelerating it into North Carolina...  This track is still very possible but again at this time I'm leaning a little west of them...

Personally I actually like the NHC's track!  This sucks because this track would NOT be good for my parents house!!!  I PRAY this is not going to happen even though it's very possible...  The only good thing with Ike is even though this is going to be a very powerful storm, it's also very compact...  Very similar to Andrew in size...  So why is this good, well because it's basically going to have to hit you dead on to get its wrath...  In Andrew homestead which is about 20 miles south of Downtown Miami had 165mph winds where in downtown Miami you had 90-100mph winds...  So I think with Ike you're going to see a similar wind gradient like you saw in Hurricane Andrew and also like you saw in Hurricane Charley...  Even though this is still way too tough to say for sure right now, I'm going with a Cat-4 landfall between Key West and West Palm Beach at this time...  To me the bottom line is southern Florida needs to watch this storm VERY carefully because in my opinion it's a HUGE threat right now!!!  I really believe the ridge will hold strong longer than the GFS/Canadian/NOGAPS think!  More on Ike tomorrow...