Hello all. Don't post much here, but I do actively track hurricanes - I live in Tampa Bay! Using the link below the ECMWF model was predicting this landfall track (fairly close) all the way back on labor day weekend when Ike was barely a tropical storm. Interesting. I don't hear this model used a lot, I see a lot of focus on GFDL, GFS, and HWFI (I think). With the exception of I believe 2 model runs where it brought Ike into east Florida, the ECMWF held strong to a Houston - New Orleans land fall until Sept. 7th where it seemed to drop it, according to the link below? Question: is the model usually reliable? Was it just lucky? It really seemed to out perform other models for this storm early in the game. We all need to pray for the people of Texas and be mindful of the verbiage we use on this forum.

http://www.ecmwf.int/products/forecasts/...s!2008082712!!/