Not only is Houston in play, the models have had nearly every spot from North Carolina down to FL across to S.Texas in play - I said yesterday I wouldn’t be surprised to see this eventually hit Guatemala, even. That continues to seem exceedingly unlikely, but with each passing day becomes more plausible.
Until the turn north actually becomes clear, Ike reminds me of Wayne Gretzky handling the puck crossing in front of the net all alone - when is he going to let fly with his shot? There’s no telling. Until the shot comes, it is going to be tough to call this sucker.
Historically, none of the Sep. tracks have been even similar to Ike. Not a one of those plotted now “within 500mi of this position” have tracked WSW as this has, and only one has ever tracked W.
I’ve got a feeling (no knowledge, prescience, etc.) that this sucker is going to break north hard and into AL/FL panhandle. Only CLP5 has it doing that, though. In fact none of the other models really have it breaking sharply north ever, but rather drive it NW.
That midlevel ridge is holding up much longer than they were predicting it to hold up four days ago, though, and so far there’s no real physical evidence that it won’t continue to hold until Ike goes all the way west. Until Ike overcomes that, this is still like that hockey player.
I just reviewed the historical tracks that are up now. It is now apparent that Ike is even more in a class almost of it’s own.
From this location, every previous hurricane has been tracking WNW or more northerly than that. One(1888) overcame that and started going W, even WSW - eventually hitting the Yucatan. One(1926) ended up staying NW and going into MS/AL. Most of the rest went up through FL... but that’s not surprising since that is the direction they were already headed.