Hurricane Ike is expected to grow stronger as it travels across the Gulf of Mexico, and is predicted to head towards the Texas coast. Potentially millions could be impacted and/or evacuated.

ESRI has posted a hurricane support site with information and links to help get needed software or data.

We visited the site and found a link to NOAA'a National Hurricane Center, where we found GIS data that could be downloaded. Here we've used Explorer and the NOAA data to create a map showing the predicted track of the hurricane.

The attributes include information on predicted wind and time at a location. Clicking to view the attributes in the popup window, we can see on the right where the hurricane is predicted to be at 7:00 p.m. this evening, with winds of 90 mph and gusts up to 110 mph. On the left the popup shows where the hurricane is predicted to be at 7:00 a.m. Friday, with winds of 110 mph and gusts of 135 mph.

The data also includes predicted storm surge warnings. Below, the red outlines show areas threatened by the surge.