MGC wrote:All of the wind sources listed have a margin of error. How often does a sonde get dropped and happens to fall though the max winds? SFMR is only good well off shore, while Humberto was intensifying very close to land. Station data again has to be in the right place at the right time. Nexrad is pretty good but every storm is different thus the reduction factor varies by storm although the NHC uses a standard reduction factor like every hurricane eye wall profile is identical. Humberto could have been a low end Cat-2 but who knows......MGC
There's always the possibility; for example, Floyd was, by best track, a category 4, but it was so close that it might have well have been a category 5. I would think, though, that 80 knots would be a very correct estimate, given the information available. The NHC is one of the more accurate RSMCs in the world, you know, and they very rarely screw things up badly (though it does definitely happen, see "2005 Atlantic hurricane season", although that's not being fair, now, is it?
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