Ike - Integrated Kinetic Energy and Hurricane Ike

The Galveston County News has an article today by their weather reporter, Stan Blazyk, about the IKE scale - worth reading. Hurricane Ike measured a 5.6 on the scale of 1-6 on the Integrated Kinetic Energy scale. (Another article I read said Hurricane Ike measured 5.4 - still larger than Katrina) Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Wilma only measured 5.1. While I never found the reference in Weatherwise, he mentions that Hurricane Ike was designated as the largest hurricane ever in the North Atlantic Basin. Weatherwise also has an interesting article about a reporter who followed Gustav. Hunting Gustav: A Broadcast Meteorologist's Diary which noted that the Great Galveston Hurricane of 1900 and Hurricane Ike both connected with cold fronts and re-strengthened over the midwest. It is an interesting read.

If you are interested in reading more about the Ike scale, Stan Blazyk's article provided two links. A Google search for the Ike Scale also came up with more interesting articles that have been written since Ike. I suspect that in the future, hurricane forecasters will be using the newer Ike scale in addition to the Saffir-Simpson scale to give a better sense of how much damage a given storm will produce.