UPDATE (12PM): The water levels on the Mississippi coast are over 4 feet above normal in some places, as Hurricane Ike pushes water northward - a pre-storm surge, if you will.

Keep the comments coming (by clicking on "Comment" / "Leave a Comment" at the bottom), I have replied to several below. If you are looking for a forecast for your town, see yesterday's entry.

Here's a Google Map where I (sloppily) illustrate that, because the Mississippi coast is on the right side of Ike, it is getting the longest fetch [WikiPedia], causing the water to pile up on shore.

UPDATE: I want to reiterate some things I said earlier: IKE IS NO GUSTAV; landfall will be harder to pinpoint, and this storm is much larger and stronger. However, at this time, IT'S ALSO NO KATRINA. The only thing Ike going has against it is that, on satellite, he still is disorganized, and does not look as scary as Katrina did. That may change.

Here's this morning's recon flight data:

The water levels at Galveston Bay are already running a foot above normal. You can get more info from the NDBC display, the CO-OPS display, or the USGS (different stations).

UPDATE: The buoy to watch today is #42001. Waves at 26 feet so far, winds over 50 knots, pressure plummeting. The storm will pass very close to this buoy this afternoon and evening, giving us a rare look at a strong storm over the ocean. Here is a satellite shot from this morning with the buoy location plotted, and below is a map comparing Hurricane Katrina's track to that of Ike. It will be interesting to see how the observations compare. Waves & winds during Katrina at 42001, according to an archived report, were not significant enough to be mentioned. At 42003, which was a similar distance but opposite side of the storm, winds gusted to 85 mph and waves punched up to 35 feet. Closer to land, waves hit 55 feet (something I blogged about).

ORIGINAL REPORT: There are some very important points about Hurricane Ike to get across this morning.

1. The track has changed; the Houston area is now in Hurricane Ike's sights, and blog reader Mike from yesterday had better start battening down the hatches. (Read yesterday's entry for advice on how you can obtain the latest information on Hurricane Ike). The model transformation during the last 18 hours is quite something. You can a comparison between yesterday afternoon's Model Spread [JessePedia] and this morning's below (the box is drawn by me to show the most dense agreement among the models).

As a result, the tracks from NHC and AccuWeather have moved northward overnight. Our current projection is that Hurricane Ike will make landfall just south of Galveston/Houston area as a Category 4 storm, giving them the worst of the storm surge and winds. The NHC says the same, but as a Cat 3.

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2. Joe Bastardi believes the storm will "tighten up" and hence intensify for two reasons, and they're not the meteorological ones you've been hearing about.

3. The NHC has some interesting things to say about Ike, one of which I said yesterday... reading this, I think the big story from this storm will be the wind, and significant wind damage will be seen over a large area, which has not been the case with recent storms, so it could be a surprise to residents.

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