0830  AM EDT  HURRICANE IKE  UPDATE
All of the overnight data with regard to the potential track for hurricane IKE continues to be really bad news for the Houston metro area as the hurricane models continue to shift north with every new run.
What is particularly disquieting from my point of view is that the European model which has been the model of choice over the past four days regarding Ike… which was the first model to show the northwestern long before any of the other models or hurricane models showed it… and the model which is the most consistent with his northwest turn and has never varied once… is now early this morning taking IKE very close if not directly through the Houston metro area.
note the  DUE  north track
  0Z  THURSDAY     EUROPEAN  48 HRS

0Z    THURSDAY   EUROPEAN  72 HOURS

In addition  the 0z  and    6z hurricane models are also showing the trend as you can see from these links. Clearly the new  6z hurricane models show a landfall now north of Corpus Christi   and much closer towards Houston.
0z   HURRICANE MODELS

6Z  HURRICANE  MODELS

The   trend in the Hurricane Models continued overnight  and the pressure  has  dropped  to  944 MB   so   based  STRICTLY on the pressure   IKE  is now clearly at a category  4  Hurricane … BUT the winds have yet to come up… so they are still stuck a category 2   level winds. There are several reasons for this all of which are pretty technical but eventually it seems a high probability that the winds will begin to come up over the next 24 hours and if that happens we will be looking at a solid category four hurricane at the time of landfall.
Another interesting aspect of this hurricane  will be its trajectory which again is going to enable the system to remain fairly strong right up until landfall.  More importantly the track of IKE is going to develop a powerful southeasterly Fetch  of high winds from the central Gulf driving towards the central upper Texas Gulf Coast as well as western Louisiana. Huge ocean waves will develop and start showing up in the bouys within the next 12 hours along the Gulf Coast  and the flooding potential for areas such as Sabine Pass  and Galveston Bay will be significant …. and if in fact the wind speeds to reach category for status with IKE the prolonged Southeast exposed fetch across the western Gulf of Mexico could really do a number on the coastal areas as well as potentially the refineries just in land in these regions with significant flooding.
Again I do want to emphasize that while the model data has now reached a strong consensus continues to show a sharp turn to the northwest occurring before landfall there is still some RISK that the turn will occur after the system makes landfall. In this possible scenario  IKE crashes into Corpus Christi then turns the northwest and then north tracking over Dallas.
This is scenario would mean no direct hit for the Houston area and not nearly as severe conditions for much of the Texas natural gas production areas. Interestingly a lot of relief and rescue efforts as well as evacuations   from Houston appear to be headed towards or staged out of Dallas and in this possible scenario Dallas could see Priest back conditions as the core of the  hurricane… much weekend…  passes over Dallas.
  NEXT   UPDATE   1130 AM   EDT
DT 
804   307 8070