Earlier today Category-4 hurricane Ike took a direct hit on the Turks and Cacos Islands causing tremendous damage... Currently hurricane Ike is about to make its second landfall of the day as a Category-3 across eastern Cuba... Early reports out of the Turks and Cacos is not good with indications of 80% + homes damaged or destroyed... I hope it turns out not to be as bad as first feared... My thoughts and prayers go out to the citizens of the Turks and Cacos Islands and also Cuba... Unfortunately Cuba is about be hit with it's second major hurricane in less than 10 days... I really feel bad for Cuba!!!
The trend continues to be west and it really looks like Ike will continue to stay west all the way to the Texas coastline... It's still too early to say for sure and I still want to watch it as it travels across Cuba, but I think a Texas landfall is VERY likely... It looks like both troughs will miss Ike and it will travel slowly across the Gulf and into Texas... Unfortunately this is not a good situation for Texas!!! This will not only give Ike a lot more time over the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, it will also be traveling towards a much higher area of ocean heat potential... The further west Ike goes the stronger it will be... Max potential show this threat! Of course you have to remember this doesn't take into account wind shear and dry air that could easily be there late next week... If the ambient environment is moist, and we don't have a lot of wind shear, then I fear Ike will hit Texas as at a least a Cat-3 if not a Cat-4... I'm leaning towards Corpus Christi at this time but it's way too far out to know for sure! However if I lived along the Texas coastline I would worry about Ike BIG TIME!!!
On a side note we need to watch if Ike's core gets destroyed!!! Referring back to Isidore in 2002, everyone should keep in mind that when a major hurricanes core gets destroyed it's very hard for it to get it back... It's so hard because once you destroy the inner core the inflow gets blocked by the stronger convection surrounding the hurricane... It can take days and days for the inflow to get back into the center restoring the balance you need to sustain a major hurricane... In Isidore's case it was never able to regain that balance... It was a strong 3 at landfall went it plowed into the Yucatan... It popped out and had almost 3 days over the Gulf but ran out of time before making landfall again as a strong tropical storm in SE Louisiana... Because Ike will be moving over a longer stretch of water, over deeper warmer water, and the fact that it will be moving very slowly, I think that even if Ike loses it's core it will have enough time to get it back before making landfall again in Texas... To me this is the most important thing to watch with Ike and it will be very interesting to see what happens over the next couple of days!!! More updates later...
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