Hurricane Ike

Pre-Landfall 2 | Summary
Posting Date: September 10, 2008, 7:30:00 AM

As of 8:00 am EDT, Wednesday, September 10, Hurricane Ike is located about 145 miles north of the western tip of Cuba. Maximum sustained winds have increased to 85 mph and the storm is moving to the northwest at 8 mph. Ike finally exited storm-weary Cuba at around 5 pm EDT yesterday. Although Ike was weaker than Gustav when it struck Cuba a week earlier, it raked virtually the entire length of the country, from east to west. In eastern Cuba, where Gustav made its first landfall with winds of 125 mph, Ike damaged or destroyed thousands of poorly constructed homes, toppled trees and leveled fields of sugar cane. Yesterday, the storm made a second landfall just south of the capital Havana, after having spent the previous 24 hours hugging Cuba's south coast. Although Havana was spared the worst of Ike's winds, city officials reported the collapse of at least 16 unreinforced masonry buildings from the colonial period, already in a state of advanced disrepair. Streets were left littered with wind-borne debris and broken tree limbs. According to the National Hurricane Center (NHC), satellite images indicate that Ike's cloud pattern is becoming better organized. Gradual reintensification is expected as the center moves over warm eddies of the Loop Current, but the degree of strengthening remains highly uncertain. A high pressure ridge over the northern Gulf should keep Ike on a generally west-northwest track toward the central coast of Texas, where it is currently forecast to arrive sometime on Saturday. The governor of Texas has ordered as many as 7,500 National Guard members and 1,350 busses on standby for possible evacuations. AIR estimates that the insured value of residential and commercial properties in coastal counties of Texas exceeds $890 billion. However, the distribution of these exposures is far from uniform. The largest concentrations are along the northern part of the coast, near Houston. In fact, the five northernmost coastal counties, including Houston's Harris County, account for 85% of the total coastal exposure in Texas. As of the NHC’s 8:00 am EDT advisory, Ike is likely to take a more southerly track, away from these most densely populated areas of the coast. Similarly, Ike’s forecast track would take it west and south of the primary concentrations of offshore oil and gas platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. Nevertheless, a number of companies, including Mobil Corporation and Royal Dutch Shell have already begun evacuating workers from their posts. Onshore, there are several refineries in Corpus Christi, which is near Ike’s forecast landfall location. Ike’s impact on oil prices is currently being muddied by the recent OPEC decision to cut back on output. The AIR tropical cyclone team continues to monitor the progress of Hurricane Ike closely. Updates will be issued via CATWeek NewsALERT as warranted by events. Event sets for U.S. landfall are posted within 24 to 48 hours in advance of anticipated landfall. This means that if Ike maintains its current forecast track and forward motion, the ALERT team would expect to release full pre-landfall scenario sets and corresponding loss estimates for onshore properties sometime tomorrow afternoon and again on Friday. Landfall scenarios and possibly scenarios for offshore assets would be made available at around the same time on Saturday. Of course, the release schedule of ALERT information may shift if the storm's forecast speed or direction changes substantially. In the meantime, AIR will issue updates via CATWeek NewsALERT.

Pre-Landfall 2 | Downloads
Posting Date: September 10, 2008, 7:30:00 AM