Why some tropical storms erupt into monster hurricanes capable of wrecking coastlines. Can they be predicted? September 12th, 2008. A hurricane named Ike is headed toward the beaches of Galveston Island in Texas. The eye of the storm, where the most intense winds are, is still hundreds of miles away… Yet the rising water has already spread over much of the island. Eight days back, researchers had flown into Ike and measured its winds… at 145 miles per hour. That made it a category 4 out of 5 on the Saffir-Simpson scale.