Hurricane Ike Category 4 – Sustained Winds 145 Mph – Florida Watching

Hurricane Ike Update Sun. 09/07/08 – Mapping Link At Storm Pulse

Hurricane Ike damaged most of the homes on Grand Turk island as it roared onto the Bahamas, raked Haiti’s flooded cities with driving rain and threatened the Florida Keys on its way to Cuba as a ferocious Category 4 storm Sunday.

Turks and Caicos premier Michael Misick said Ike damaged 80 percent of the homes on the main island and that hundreds lost their roofs as the hurricane made a near-direct hit. People have been cowering in closets and under stairwells and “just holding on for life. They got hit really, really bad,” he told The Associated Press Sunday morning.

With 135 mph (215 kph) winds, Ike was swirling on from the tiny British territory to the Bahamas’ Great Inagua Island, where about 85 people inside a community center shelter huddled around a radio.

“It’s looking terrible,” said Henry Nixon, a reserve police officer inside the shelter. “All we can do is hunker down and pray.”

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Hurricane Ike Update Sat. 09/06/08 – Hurricane Ike is shifting course and could strike the Florida Keys before moving into the oil-producing Gulf of Mexico, where it could strengthen, a U.S. emergency official said on Friday.

“That’s kind of a bad scenario for us, to go into the Gulf,” Federal Emergency Management Agency Assistant Administrator Glenn Cannon said. Moving over warm Gulf water could make the already powerful storm more dangerous.

Ike is a Category 3 hurricane on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale. The storm’s path was taking a more southerly direction and “changing as we talk,” Cannon said.

He said the current course could cause it to “heavily impact” the Florida Keys.

Cannon, briefing reporters on a string of Atlantic storms, also said residents evacuated by federal officials last week due to Hurricane Gustav were expected to return home by the end of this weekend.

Mandatory evacuations due to Tropical Storm Hanna along the U.S. Southeast coast were expected to be minimal, he said.

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Original Post

Hurricane Ike Category 4 – Sustained Winds 145 Mph – Florida Watching – NTARC will continue to monitor Hurricane Ike and begin posting regular updates and emergency links as additional information becomes available and a projected path of the storm becomes available.

Almost as soon as Florida fell out of Hanna’s forecast cone, it slipped into Ike’s, and that mighty, major hurricane could be on our doorstep Tuesday.

”There is a lot coming at us, but we Floridians are strong,” Gov. Charlie Crist said. “We can handle this.”

Hurricane Ike’s path will depend on the same steering currents that are pulling Tropical Storm Hanna toward a landfall in the Carolinas Saturday.
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By late Thursday, many tracking models, including the National Hurricane Center’s official forecast, pointed Ike on a course through the Turks and Caicos Islands, the Bahamas — and then South Florida.

Some models show the storm curving northeast around the Bahamas, away from Florida’s coast, and back out to sea.

Crist called Ike ”a dangerous, powerful storm.” It quickly intensified into a Category 4 hurricane with 145 mph maximum sustained winds, but forecasters expected it to drop slightly to a Category 3 storm this weekend on its approach to Florida.

A hurricane of Ike’s caliber could prove catastrophic to the Caribbean nations that are still struggling to recover from Gustav and Hanna.

”This is worrisome for us,” said Edwin Olivares, director of the Dominican Republic’s emergency operations center.

“This is a storm with a lot of rain, a lot of wind and a lot of gusts. Any one of these elements could be catastrophic.”

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Latest Advisory from the National Hurricane Center

IKE BLATS TURKS, CAICOS AS CAT 4 STORM…

HURRICANE TRACK…

MODELS…

UPDATE…

Watch Live New Coverage of Hurricane Ike Online