ATL: IKE Discussion

[Ed Mahmoud]

WV loop from ADD, updates every 15 minutes. Does appear to be an eye trying to develop.

[PTrackerLA]

Ike has become somewhat lopsided in appearance. This could be why hurricane warnings extend to Morgan City now.

[jinftl]

Dr. Jeff Master’s most wrote:

"Ike is likely to be a extremely dangerous major hurricane at landfall, and will likely do $10-$30 billion in damage."

That would put him right up there with the costliest storms.

Costliest known Atlantic hurricanes as of 2007
(2007 USD) Cost
(billions) Name Year
$81.2 Hurricane Katrina
$38.1 Hurricane Andrew
$30.4 Hurricane Wilma
$18.1 Hurricane Ivan
$16.2 Hurricane Charley
$15.23 Hurricane Agnes
$14.1 Hurricane Hugo
$10.5 Hurricane Rita
$10.4 Hurricane Frances

Either way you cut it, a cat 2 of Ike's size will cause more damage than a small cat 3, bottom line. No one make the mistake of taking this lightly.

[ConvergenceZone]

It would be cool if we could get a METs opinion on that slot, whether it's a new eye trying to establish itself or just a dry slot....

[SunnyThoughts]

http://www.wkrg.com/traffic/view/causew ... _40/15445/ Live video cam of some of the flooding in Mobile, Alabama. This is not from rain...this is ALL from the rising water caused by IKE.

[JPmia]

I looked back through the last few pages to see if this had been posted, and couldn't find it...sorry if its a duplicate.

Category 2 Ike is larger and more powerful than Katrina Posted by: JeffMasters, 11:32 AM EDT on September 11

Hurricane Ike's winds remain at Category 2 strength, but Ike is a freak storm with extreme destructive storm surge potential. Ike's pressure fell rapidly last night to 944 mb, but the hurricane did not respond to the pressure change by increasing its maximum winds in the eyewall. Instead, Ike responded by increasing the velocity of its winds away from the eyewall, over a huge stretch of the Gulf of Mexico. Another very unusual feature of Ike is the fact that the surface winds are much slower than the winds being measured aloft by the Hurricane Hunters. Winds at the surface may only be at Category 1 strength, even though Ike has a central pressure characteristic of a Category 3 or 4 storm. This very unusual structure makes forecasting the future intensity of Ike nearly impossible. The possibilities range from a Category 1 storm at landfall--as predicted by the HWRF model--to a Category 4 storm at landfall, as predicted by the GFDL.

Ike is now larger than Katrina was, both in its radius of tropical storm force winds--275 miles--and in it radius of hurricane force winds--115 miles. For comparison, Katrina's tropical storm and hurricane force winds extended out 230 and 105 miles, respectively. Ike's huge wind field has put an extraordinarily large volume of ocean water in motion. When this swirling column of water hits the shallow waters of the Continental Shelf, it will be be forced up into a large storm surge which will probably rival the massive storm surge of Hurricane Carla of 1961. Carla was a Category 4 hurricane with 145 mph winds at landfall, and drove a 10 foot or higher storm surge to a 180-mile stretch of Texas coast. A maximum storm surge of 22 feet was recorded at Port Lavaca, Texas. Despite the fact that the center of Carla hit over 120 miles southwest of Houston, the hurricane drove a 15-foot storm surge into the bays along the south side of the city. I don't expect Ike will reach Category 4 strength, thus its maximum surge is not likely to reach the extreme values above 20 feet seen in Hurricane Carla. Like Carla, though, Ike will probably inundate a 180-mile stretch of Texas coast from Port O'Connor to just north of Galveston with a 10-15 foot storm surge. This will occur even if Ike is a Category 1 storm at landfall. The latest experimental storm surge forecast From NOAA's SLOSH model (Figure 1) shows a 10% chance that Ike's storm surge will exceed 15-21 feet at Galveston. The Galveston sea wall is 17 feet high, so may get overtopped.

The amount of water Ike has put in motion is about 50% greater than what Katrina did, and thus we can expect Ike's storm surge damage will be similar to or greater than Katrina's. The way we can estimate this damage potential is to compute the total energy of Ike's surface winds (kinetic energy). To do this, we must look at how strong the winds are, and factor in the areal coverage of these winds. Thus, we compute the Integrated Kinetic Energy (IKE) by squaring the velocity of the wind and summing over all regions of the hurricane with tropical storm force winds or higher. This "Integrated Kinetic Energy" was recently proposed by Dr. Mark Powell of NOAA's Hurricane Research Division as a better measure of the destructive power of a hurricane's storm surge than the usual Category 1-5 Saffir-Simpson scale. For example, Hurricane Katrina hit Mississippi as a strong Category 3 hurricane, yet its storm surge was more characteristic of a Category 5 storm. Dr. Powell came up with a new scale to rate potential storm surge damage based on IKE (not to be confused with Hurricane Ike!) The new scale ranges from 1-6. Katrina and Wilma at their peaks both earned a 5.1 on this scale (Figure 2). At 9:30am EDT this morning, Ike earned a 5.6 on this scale, the highest kinetic energy of any Atlantic storm in the past 40 years.

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMa ... amp=200809

WOW. I think this is worth repeating again if anyone along the Texas coast that is considering NOT evacuating within an evacuation zone. This is bigger than Katrina. I would not hesitate to get the hell out of harms way.

[CronkPSU]

I wish a promet or some experienced poster would try to figure out what that was....the loop is really odd, cause the open area starts out very deformed, like a frisbee and then opens up to a very round area over th next three frames, that area is on the trop points and there does seem to be rotation around it but I am shocked none of the vets in here mentioned it

[KWT]

Yep Jeff Masters is right, even if Ike comes in as a 2 its generated such a huge surge and also because its got such a huge region of hurricane winds, this will be a very dangerous hurricane.

[Steve]

>>that open spot appears on the water vapor as well

Let me speculate this, and that's all it is is rogue, amateur speculation. But if we do get a 30-40 mile wide eye, that's pretty anomalous in the Gulf. Wilma was one of the few storms I can recall in the Gulf as it headed NE/ENE across south Florida that had a massive eye. I have no idea what the intensity will be at landfall, and I'm not going there. But if the eye or even outer eyewall is very large, then it would stand to reason that there would be a larger area of immediate damage due to the inner portion of Hurricane Ike. It's one thing if you've got a 8-12 mile wide eye encircled by the strongest winds and convection a storm has to offer. It's quite another thing if it is significantly larger. So it would be my guess than rather than a 20-25 mile swath of super strong wind damage at landfall, it could cover a wider area if the circumference of the "eyewall" (or center of convection, or whatever they choose to call it with Ike down the road) is substantially larger.

Again, not saying anything "x" is going to happen. Just an interested observer likely to see some TS conditions up my way observing some curiosities unique to Ike and trying to learn from them.

Steve

[Brent]

WV loop from ADD, updates every 15 minutes. Does appear to be an eye trying to develop.

Looks like an eye to me as well. It's in the right spot.

[CronkPSU]

thanks Brent, I was hoping you would chime in but hoping you were going to say we were wrong

[lys3rg0]

It would be cool if we could get a METs opinion on that slot, whether it's a new eye trying to establish itself or just a dry slot....

or you could wait another half an hour to see more frames and judge for yourself... i don't think anyone, pro or not, can say for sure based on current imagery.

[KWT]

It is looking like an eye if you look here:

http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~gadomski/SATR ... m16ir.html

note the convection on the NW side and its movement. Of course we've seen Ike try form an eye before only for it be gone a few hours later.

[Brent]

thanks Brent, I was hoping you would chime in but hoping you were going to say we were wrong

That being said, we'll see if it persists. An eye tried to pop out last night and didn't last long.

[CoCo2]

Ike has become somewhat lopsided in appearance. This could be why hurricane warnings extend to Morgan City now.

Thanks, but what does that mean? Change of direction?

[Steve]

Agreed lys. Absent a VDM, and I'm so swamped at work between trying to unbury myself from last week's hiatus and watching Ike like a hawk that I don't even have time to fool with recon. I'm sure they'll mention it if they fly in there. On the WV loop Ed posted, you can see some deep convection riding east and north of there. If it wraps, I think we could say with certainty that it is the center. If not, well it might just be a transient feature within the confines of a larger circulation. Super interesting day of Ike watching. I think we're all learning a few things.

Steve

[Sabanic]

Ike has become somewhat lopsided in appearance. This could be why hurricane warnings extend to Morgan City now.

Must be. No doubt that the eastern side, and the south to some extent are carrying the largest portion of bad weather. Who ever is on the eastern side for miles are going to feel the wrath of old Ike

[Steve]

>>It is looking like an eye if you look here:

You know we really, REALLY don't want to see that intense, cold-top convection wrap around that point from the east. Wow. That could be something - the old heat engine/snowball rolling downhill analogy Bastardi always talked about when he was free.

Watching.

Steve

[dwg71]

That is not an eye if it were, Ike would be moving SW and he's not.

[THead]

Either way you cut it, a cat 2 of Ike's size will cause more damage than a small cat 3, bottom line. No one make the mistake of taking this lightly.

Yeah, I was also wondering how Ike's current configuration/size will translate to tornado risk at landfall. Do you people think Ike will have a greater risk for tornados just because of the size of his windfield or what?
Thanks.