Ya, crap. My friends just bought a house in Houston.

We have an office in Dallas, they should be fine. I'm trying to find Katy on the path map. I hope that's out of the path.

Umm... Katy is out I-10 (west of downtown). Currently that is just east of where the center is expected to pass. "East" being the wrong side to be on.

Katy, according to the news, can expect sustained winds of ~95mph when the storm arrives. On the good side, it not an area prone to flooding. They are NOT in the mandatory evac zone.

I always enjoy looking at the various models.

That orange one is ALWAYS way too far east with its projections. At what point does whoever is running that one just say "hmmm, that's not working." And I like the lime green one that has it going to OKC, apparently getting scared and forgetting which way the wind blows, making a sharp left and heading to New Mexico.

The orange track is known as Cliper5 (for 5-days). It uses the current path of a hurricane and an average of historical paths of similar hurricanes to come up with a track, and is considered a "no-skill" model. Curiously, until the late 1980s, this was actually the most accurate model.

The "Lime Green" is BAM-S. 'S' for shallow. It's ment for tropical storms with a weak center of rotation. As you can see, it's not much good for a well developed storm like Ike.

Ps....

I would also suggest you go today and fill up your gas tank no matter where you live. With the gulf oil rigs cleared out yet again, and two of the largest gas refineries in the country in the possible path of the storm, prices are almost sure to spike soon.

Gasbuddy.com shows gas at an average of $3.729/gal in Anaheim today. Let's see how well my prediction does....

Thanks

Ya, doing that on my lunch. Screw the 10 cents cheaper at Costco which I was going to go to on Friday. That equals $1.20 in my tank.

Ditto. Except not ditto... Took the train today and filling up once I get home. And screw the Sam's Club which is about 8-cents cheaper. Or wait, is that screw the 8 cents? Oh well... Getting gas today.

I know they aren't the same storm, but Gustav had no net increase effect on gas prices at the station across the street from us. It may have slowed their drop (it has been a steady 2 cent drop every other day for a six weeks or so now).

I've seen a couple of articles that give credit to Gustav for lowering prices. However I think things will be different with Ike. Gulf oil workers were just getting back to work after Gustav when the had to shut down again for Ike making the outage of Gulf drilling much longer. Also the refineries along the Texas coast are the largest we have. So shutting them down even for a short period will have a larger emotional effect.

Still it is just my guess. We'll see what happens....