Hurricane Ike is getting larger as a tropical cyclone with hurricane force winds that reach out as far as 115 miles from the storm center, with tropical force winds outward to 275 miles. As of 10:00 a.m., September 11th, hurricane warnings are up, ranging from Morgan City Louisiana to Baffin Bay, Texas. Hurricane conditions could reach the coast within the warning area by late Friday, September 12th. At that time, Ike’s center was located near 25.5 north and longitude 88.4 west, or 580 miles east-southeast of Corpus Christi, Texas. That’s also about 470 miles east-southeast of Galveston, Texas. As of this writing, Ike is a Category 2 hurricane with maximum sustained winds near 100 mph. He is forecast to strengthen to a Category 3 storm before reaching the Texas coastline as he moves west-northwest near 10 mph. Ike will be near the coast late on September 12th, however, because Ike is large, tropical storm force winds will be felt far in advance.
NASA‘s TRMM spacecraft observed this view of Hurricane Ike on Septembermber 10th, 2008 as the storm slammed into Cuba. Ike was a Category 1 hurricane with sustained winds of 75 knots (86.25 mph) and a pressure reading of 963 millibars. TRMM’s data and aircraft reports confirm the small inner eye is eroding as the outer bands, shown here as red towers, are becoming better defined. The cloud cover was taken by TRMM’s Visible and Infrared Scanner (VIRS) and the GOES spacecraft. The rain structure is taken by TRMM’s Tropical Microwave Imager (TMI) and TRMM’s Precitation Radar (PR) instruments. TRMM looks underneath of the storm’s clouds to reveal the underlying rain structure. The colored isosurface uner the clouds show the rain seen by the PR instrument. This surface is colored according to cloud height where yellow represents 10 km thunderclouds and red represents 12 km more intense thunderclouds.
Hurricane Ike has also delayed the scheduled Friday arrival of a Russian Progress cargo ship at the International Space Station, 220 miles above Earth. The Progress docking was postponed when the space station’s control room at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston was closed Thursday because of the approaching storm. Control of the space station was handed to flight controllers at backup facilities near Austin, Texas, and Huntsville, Alabama. As the Mission Control Center in Houston is responsible for commanding many of the station’s systems, U.S. and Russian officials agreed to delay the docking. Russian flight controllers will execute a maneuver to place the Progress spacecraft into a safe orbit away from the station until docking, which is planned for Wednesday, September 17th. If Johnson’s control center is not restored to full capability for docking, one of the backup facilities may be used to command the station’s systems. Station Commander Sergei Volkov and Flight Engineers Oleg Kononenko and Greg Chamitoff are awaiting the arrival of the cargo ship. The spacecraft is carrying more than 2 tons of supplies, including food and fuel.
