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Cuba is taking the brunt of the storm as Hurricane Ike travels along its very spine. Remarkably, Ike still had a visible eye this morning, and is showing fewer signs of weakening than expected.
It is remotely possible that will be so ripped up by the time it finished with Cuba and enters the Gulf that it will not reform, but the smart money is on what would then be Tropical Storm Ike reforming to a Hurricane pretty quickly, staring late Tuesday and overnight to Wednesday AM. Mot likely, as people in the Eastern and Central Time Zones in the US wake up Wednesday AM, they will be hearing about Category One or Two Hurricane Ike.
Then the game starts. Ike is heading right for Texas, SW of the Louisiana border. There are two different sets of models being used to predict Ike's path. The classic and generally best models show Ike aiming for Texas, as stated, but an alternative model that has shown itself to have been correct with Ike more often than not shows Ike making a right turn at some (unknown) point. What this means is that between Wednesday AM and Friday PM, anyone living in Louisiana (maybe, but not likely, Mississippi) or Texas could discover that there is a Category Three or Four hurricane heading their way in less than a day.
But, it is still early. Hopefully, when Ike exits Cuba tomorrow night, the steering winds that will be needed to forecast the storm's direction will be better defined.
In the mean time, in Cuba:
Hurricane Ike battered northern Cuba overnight with giant waves and torrential rain, but has weakened slightly as it moves over the island.The Category Two storm's maximum sustained winds are still more than 165km/h (105mph).
Some homes along the coast, where some 800,000 people have been evacuated, have been damaged beyond repair.
Earlier, Ike killed 61 people in Haiti and reportedly damaged 80% of homes on the main Turks and Caicos islands.
The Cuban Meteorology Institute said the eye of the hurricane came ashore near Punta Lucrecia in the state of Holguin about 510 miles (823km) south-east of the capital Havana.
Ike in Cuba:
Comments
update: Ike crossed Cuba quickly and will remain a hurricane, strafing the south coast of Cuba before crossing again into the Gulf, heading straight for Houston, looks like.
Posted by: uncle noel | September 8, 2008 3:01 PM