... in the life of a hurricane.
About 24 hours ago, I was looking at the projected path of Hurricane Ike, which had crossed over Cuba and was hovering over the Caribbean.
As expected, Ike had weakened into a tropical storm during its time on land, but it has shown a tendency to regroup when it gets over water. And it became a hurricane again over those Caribbean waters.
Anyway, at that time, it was expected to make landfall again sometime this afternoon, cross Cuba again, perhaps weakening to a tropical storm again while on land, and then head out to sea, into the open waters of the Gulf of Mexico, where it would strengthen into a significant hurricane, maintaining a west-northwest trajectory.
That projection model took Ike's path to the Galveston area, spreading rain over most of Louisiana and half of Texas by the end of the week.
But the unpredictable nature of hurricanes has shown itself in the last 24 hours.
Ike has proceeded across Cuba again, as expected, but its latest projected path takes it more to the west and less to the northwest.
It barely qualified as a hurricane when it hit Cuba for the second time, but it hadn't spent much time over water before making landfall again.
When it emerges from Cuba, it will have the entire Gulf of Mexico to feed its ravenous appetite.
And that could mean that Ike will be a Category 3 storm when it makes landfall again — wherever that might be. As this storm has demonstrated, long-term projections for hurricanes are virtually useless, and the National Hurricane Center says Ike could make landfall anywhere from northern Mexico to the Texas-Louisiana border.
For awhile Louisiana was out of the picture for significant rainfall, according to the projection, while most of Texas was going to get some rain from Ike.
And the hurricane was expected to make landfall south of Corpus Christi, Texas, instead of near Galveston — which is nearly 200 miles north of Corpus Christi.
But the late afternoon projection today now calls for Ike to make a sudden turn to the right while it's still in the Gulf (its projected path is becoming weirdly reminiscent of Kevin Costner's description of the zig-zag path of the "magic bullet" in "JFK") and may now make landfall near Galveston after all.
And the projection now calls for western Louisiana to see some rain this weekend, along with nearly all of Texas and all of Oklahoma. Western Arkansas should also see some rain, according to the latest projection.
Keep your eyes on this one. It could still do just about anything.
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