I dunno, MM. The LLC is a pretty vigorous one on visible satellite imagery. It's a heavily sheared system, but so was Franklin and so is Harvey. The QuikSCAT pass was pretty conclusive (high-res shaded at http://manati.orbit.nesdis.noaa.gov/storm_byu_at_image21/byu_hires20052190759_09.png) and continues the trend of development evidenced from the nighttime pass Friday night, Saturday night, and into Sunday morning with stronger winds as the convection -- admittedly removed from the center -- got going. There's a mid-level feature just SE of the system that is obscuring things, even on visible imagery, but overall the surface circulation is going strong.

Unfortunately, all of the recent microwave imager passes missed the storm, so we don't have that tool to better diagnose the storm's structure. Admittedly as well, the system did look better earlier -- more coincident with the QuikSCAT pass -- but I don't see a lot to suggest that the intensity is on the high side. They've been using QuikSCAT a lot more with storms far from land as a supplement to the Dvorak technique, which in itself is not perfect, and the two are in pretty good agreement at this time. I do agree though...this one is looking more and more like one for the fish.

Just my two cents as well...