As I write this, Hurricane Ike is churning in the central Gulf of Mexico with winds of 100 mph and hurricane force winds extending out to 100 miles northeast of the center.  The eye of Hurricane Ike is forecast to move directly over my home in southwest Houston (my own forecast) in just over 36 hours.  So far, Ike’s forecast over the past few days has reminded me very much of Hurricane Rita in 2005.  Even the timing has been identical (landfall early Saturday morning).  On Thursday, September 22nd three years ago, Rita made the early turn to the northwest, sparing Houston.  I’m still waiting for Ike to make that turn at noon on Thursday, September 11th.  

From the start, the models haven’t really done a very good job with Ike.  There was always plenty of model “consensus”, which always makes a meteorologist feel good about a forecast, but that consensus has been consistently wrong. Remember that Ike was initially forecast to head toward the Bahamas and make a right turn up the East U.S. Coast.  Then it was southeast Florida, western Florida, Mississippi/Alabama, southeast Louisiana, down to south Texas, the mid Texas coast, and now the upper Texas coast.  Just about everyone from the Mid Atlantic Coast to Brownsville, TX has been in the cross hairs of Ike at one time or another over the past ten days.  Surely Ike’s track has to change again, right?  With just over 36 hours before landfall, if Ike does change course, where might it go?

Over the past two weeks, we’ve followed the success (and failure) of the European model’s (ECMWF) performance with Gustav, Hanna and Ike. The ECMWF nailed Gustav’s landfall on the mid Louisiana coast from over seven days out.  With Hanna, the ECMWF forecast another Louisiana hit, only to have Hanna stall near the Bahamas then track north into the Carolinas as a tropical storm.  On Friday, September 5th, the ECMWF was forecasting Ike to be just south of the mid Louisiana coast on Friday, September 12th, just about where Ike will be located tomorrow, as shown in the graphic below:

So the European model did very well in predicting where Ike would be just prior to landfall so far.  The problem is, it had Ike moving northward into southwest or south-central Louisiana vs. the Texas coast.  But wait! Just in the past 30 minutes as I’ve been writing this, my coworkers inform me that Ike has made a jog to the northwest. Sure enough, Ike’s current position is now about 20-30 miles north of the forecast track. Could this be the northerly turn the ECMWF was predicting?  It’s too soon to tell.  But when you have a potentially major hurricane pointed right at you, any track change is significant.  My gut has always been telling me that Ike will move ashore east of Galveston Bay, though the models have all been saying otherwise.  It’s hard to believe that after so many poor model forecasts that they’ve finally gotten it right.

I guess we’ll just have to wait another 36 hours to find out where Ike makes its final landfall.

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