ATL: IKE Discussion

[ConvergenceZone]

Wow, what happened to the DEEP REDS in IKE? I'm curious how much more convection this is going to lose....

[wxman57]

put the GFDL in the circular file

Derek, we have our track east of Galveston Bay now. Across Bolivar peninsula and up the east side of the Bay. Could be adjusting it more tonight/tomorrow if it takes another NW jog. For a while, we measured about 315 deg at 13 kts early this afternoon. Jumped 30 miles north of our track.

Dinner time. Bag packed to ride out Ike at work tomorrow through Saturday. Have several cameras.

[artist]

http://www.pnj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/galler ... 802&Ref=PH
those are from Pensacola Beach, Fl from Ike today.

GULFPORT, Miss. (AP) — Unusually high tides whipped up by Hurricane Ike flooded some streets and yards in low areas along the Mississippi Gulf Coast on Thursday.
The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency said the flooding was again threatening to enter some Katrina cottages. Gov. Haley Barbour called Thursday for the activation of the Mississippi National Guard for flood support operations.

About 100 Guard troops were sent to help, including to conduct patrols and checkpoints to secure neighborhoods and businesses until the floodwaters recede, Guard spokesman Tim Powell said.

This is what is happening in Gulfport, MS.
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/storms/ ... oast_N.htm
Alabama has flooding going on.
These are all places where Ike has not and will not fo onshore, yet his surge is already causing these problems. Just because his winds may not be as high as a cat 3, which, believe me a 1 is no fun to go through, he is powerful and destructive whether he gains strength in his winds or not.

[rtd2]

Ike certainly has grown these past 48hrs. Man he is huge. His outflow is nearly taking up the entire GOM. If anyone along the threatened coast is thinking of staying put. I say: PLEASE DON'T DO IT! Even if Ike stays steady as a 100 mph sustained cat. 2 storm, with those wind swath of 115 miles (for hurricane force winds) and 275 miles (for gale, i.e. 39 mph or greater, winds) and a flat coast line the storm surge flooding is going to be catastrophically devastating.

as well as the surge energy is equivalent to a cat 5 according to our mets here earlier. That is what happened with Katrina according to them.

I agree IKE will have a MAJOR storm surge even if its below a cat 3 at L/F due to its overall windfield size....Katrina for sure had a cat 5 surge and 155mph + winds just 18hrs. before landfall that helped too. someone else posted earlier IKE = Intense Kinetic Energy...

[93superstorm]

Very deep convection now starting to wrap around the eye and on outflow, it looks like it may start to intensify:

[dizzyfish]

Please keep safe wxman57!

[amawea]

Wow, what happened to the DEEP REDS in IKE? I'm curious how much more convection this is going to lose....

That second image isn't Ike. It's Katrina.
Ike is looking better
http://www.stormpulse.com/satellite/flo ... 09-11-2245

[Sabanic]

http://www.pnj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/galler ... 802&Ref=PH
those are from Pensacola Beach, Fl from Ike today.

GULFPORT, Miss. (AP) — Unusually high tides whipped up by Hurricane Ike flooded some streets and yards in low areas along the Mississippi Gulf Coast on Thursday.
The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency said the flooding was again threatening to enter some Katrina cottages. Gov. Haley Barbour called Thursday for the activation of the Mississippi National Guard for flood support operations.

About 100 Guard troops were sent to help, including to conduct patrols and checkpoints to secure neighborhoods and businesses until the floodwaters recede, Guard spokesman Tim Powell said.

This is what is happening in Gulfport, MS.
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/storms/ ... oast_N.htm
Alabama has flooding going on.
These are all places where Ike has not and will not fo onshore, yet his surge is already causing these problems. Just because his winds may not be as high as a cat 3, which, believe me a 1 is no fun to go through, he is powerful and destructive whether he gains strength in his winds or not.

Great post. Let folks know how big and powerful he is, and that they need to heed the warnings of the NHC and local agencies. We have had gusts here between 30-35, and look how far away we are. That ought to tell you something.

[shah8]

The 00:45 ir shot shows an intensifying eye-ring trying to wrap around from the south.

[fasterdisaster]

Wow, what happened to the DEEP REDS in IKE? I'm curious how much more convection this is going to lose....

Sigh...

Once again:
http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/tropic/real- ... hr_24.html

This is completely expected and in no way is this weakening.

[superfly]

These are all places where Ike has not and will not fo onshore, yet his surge is already causing these problems. Just because his winds may not be as high as a cat 3, which, believe me a 1 is no fun to go through, he is powerful and destructive whether he gains strength in his winds or not.

Actually a cat 1 is pretty fun to go through. Strong TS is probably the best though, still safe enough to play football out in the rain.

[TreasureIslandFLGal]

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

bump

[Steve]

>>Very deep convection now starting to wrap around the eye and on outflow, it looks like it may start to intensify:

Noticing that myself. Looking like the tops are cooling tonight. Sustainable? Who knows. WNWish - 295ish????? Would like to know the heading, but I'm not a good plotter. . IR4 shows a pretty complete looking center for once. Might be eliptical but looks semi-encircled - almost like a popped zit if you look at the ring around it. Anyway, still appears to be stairstepping toward the upper TX coast.

Steve

[ConvergenceZone]

Wow, what happened to the DEEP REDS in IKE? I'm curious how much more convection this is going to lose....

Sigh...

Once again:
http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/tropic/real- ... hr_24.html

This is completely expected and in no way is this weakening.

I was just comparing the two images that tolakram posted. The earlier one had really deep reds and the latest one didn't.

[HURAKAN]

[93superstorm]

[fasterdisaster]

OK I'm watching TWC and it really seems like nobody in Galveston really cares. I'm sure some people have evacuated, but seriously there are people playing on the beach waving, and I'm not talking about 1 or 2, I'm talking about a dozen or more. Also in Houston it doesn't really seem like there are enough people on the roads. It looks like normal 8 PM traffic. Really worried about the people staying down there (especially Galveston)

[amawea]

Wow, what happened to the DEEP REDS in IKE? I'm curious how much more convection this is going to lose....

Sigh...

Once again:
http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/tropic/real- ... hr_24.html

This is completely expected and in no way is this weakening.

Definately looking better at the end of that faster. I don't see how anyone can't see that!

[rtd2]

These are all places where Ike has not and will not fo onshore, yet his surge is already causing these problems. Just because his winds may not be as high as a cat 3, which, believe me a 1 is no fun to go through, he is powerful and destructive whether he gains strength in his winds or not.

Actually a cat 1 is pretty fun to go through. Strong TS is probably the best though, still safe enough to play football out in the rain.

Gustav was pretty fun...max gust were about 50mph...but after staying for Katrina..NO MORE MAJORS!

[dhweather]

Ike certainly has grown these past 48hrs. Man he is huge. His outflow is nearly taking up the entire GOM. If anyone along the threatened coast is thinking of staying put. I say: PLEASE DON'T DO IT! Even if Ike stays steady as a 100 mph sustained cat. 2 storm, with those wind swath of 115 miles (for hurricane force winds) and 275 miles (for gale, i.e. 39 mph or greater, winds) and a flat coast line the storm surge flooding is going to be catastrophically devastating.

as well as the surge energy is equivalent to a cat 5 according to our mets here earlier. That is what happened with Katrina according to them.

Very similar - the gigantic with Katrina wind field pushed water in relentlessly. Now imagine if Ike was a 5 - 30 foot + in Galveston.