I wrote a similar article on Hurricane Hanna about how the pressure of Hanna was well into hurricane levels yet, the storm was just a tropical storm. And, now we are seeing the same in Hurricane Ike. In fact, the pressure of Ike, now at 946mb where the National Hurricane Center says is sufficient for borderline category three/category four hurricane. It’s just a question of finding the winds to support that classification.
On the night of September 4, the National Hurricane Center upgraded Hurricane Ike to a category four storm. The pressure at that time: 948mb. Hurricane Ike was at the end of a rapid intensification cycle and reconnaissance found surface winds in excess of 135mph. Yet, now, they can’t seem to find anything at the surface higher than 97mph.
I strongly suspect the National Hurricane Center will not be as reluctant to reclassify Ike based on that pressure as they were Hanna. Sometime today, I have to believe regardless of what the reconnaissance finds the National Hurricane Center will make an estimate of the winds to fit the pressure. I’m sure already they have used the Dvorak Technique to verify the winds the recon is finding. But, though I am not familiar with the Dvorak Technique, I’d be hard-pressed to believe that Ike, as well organized as it is, would not fit the typical cloud-classification of a category three hurricane.
The only thing that is important to note in regards to this is there is no eye…at least, not visibly. It is highly unusual a storm with that pressure would not have at least a partially-filled eye visible on satellite imagery. This almost suggests to me the storm may not be vertically-stacked, another issue we discussed in regards to Hanna. If that is indeed the case, then we would certainly see the intensification via winds once the storm starts having a more symmetrical CDO and an eye. Of course, at that point, expect even more intensification deeper than the storm is currently – at least, pressure-wise.
The mayor of Houston will be having a press conference at 6AM CDT. I will post on anything interesting he says. I’m very interested if they ask for mandatory evacuations or not. And if they do, how many people will heed?
