The point is that the faster a storm is moving, the less decay of hurricane force winds as it moves inland. Slow moving storms will generally lose their strength closer to the coast.
Thanks.
Bump to you PL so you can see NN’s post and link ...
That is quite interesting NN. Especially since we live in Florida. I just went outside and the clouds are moving across the sky very fast here N. of Orlando. There is a slight breeze and the moon is shining through every so often.
Just chiming in from Central Louisiana. We may not be directly in Ike’s path now, but because we haven’t recovered from Gustav yet in terms of flooding, power outages, damaged structures, saturated soil, splintered trees, etc., we are definitely going to be impacted up here as well. It was reported tonight that, a week after Gustav, a levee just broke in the Alexandria area.
We called off our trip to Arkansas this weekend. There’s no way that we want to be in the path of any spun-off tornados, let alone be part of the northbound traffic jam on I-49, a designated hurricane evacuation route.
Speaking of which, I remember those Cafepress.com shirts that came out after Rita with the logo “I Survived Hurricane Rita: The Texas Traffic Jam.” I remember that there was a very serious accident during the Rita evacuation. Please correct me on the exact details, but wasn’t it a bus full of nursing home patients that rolled over in bumper-to-bumper traffic? I pray with all my heart that those people who felt that like they evacuated for no good reason during Rita won’t disregard the warnings for Ike this time around. I hope the authorities in Texas will be better prepared for the traffic flow. It sounded really weird to hear on the news tonight that Louisiana is actually offering assistance to Texas at this point!
Anyway, just wanted to throw my $0.02 in — prayers to everyone who is in Ike’s path!
I am now convinced Ike will not strengthen much before landfall. It looks great, but it can’t fully get rid of the inner eyewall and double wind maxes.
It may grow to 110 mph winds or so before landfall.
But, I highly, highly doubt it will be a cat 4 or even a high cat 3.
Maybe a low-end cat 3......maybe....
Regardless, even at a cat 2 it will do a lot of damage with a monstrous surge even with weaker winds.