Ike

No, this isn't about the candy.

As I write this, Hurricane Ike has winds of 135mph, which makes it a Category 4 hurricane. It's moving off to the west-southwest in the direction of Cuba. After its meeting with Cuba, though, where's it headed?

I'm not a tropical weather forecaster - far from it. I do have some knowledge on what goes into forecasting tropical systems, though. There are some similarities to our own forecasting. Tropical forecasters look at what's going on in the very big scheme of things. If there's something happening a few thousand miles away from a hurricane, it can certainly have an impact on its movement (the Bermuda high pressure, for example, steers tropical systems). They also look at computer models, just like we do. There are a few extra computer models that are designed specifically for forecasting tropical systems' intensity and track, though. And they also look at paths of tropical systems when the atmospheric conditions were similar to the current one.










So, let's take a look at some of these things. The first image shows the official National Hurricane Center's forecast path. The center of the cone of uncertainty, as it's called, is right over Cuba, although there is the potential for the center of Ike to miss Cuba entirely. The next image shows some of the various computer model guidance for Ike. The GFDL (blue line) has been doing a pretty good job with predicting Ike's path so far. The final image - a very messy one - shows the paths of all the September Category 3+ hurricanes that were at one time, while a Category 3+, located within 300 miles of Ike's current position. Hopefully that makes sense... anyway, you'll notice that not even once has any such hurricane tracked right over Cuba. In fact, only one has been close, and it swung north of the island. It'll be interesting to see what happens, knowing that it's not something that is typical.