Don't know if this is in the models or not but it looks like Irene is in for the same 'hammer milling' Franklin and Harvey received on their trip northeast along the coast. I'm not a machinist but one type of 'hammer mill' has a cross with pivoting hammers at the ends. Basically the stuff getting hammered passes underneath. In this case the hammers are a succession of fronts emerging from North America into the skies over the Atlantic while (ordinarily) pivoting more or less around the Arctic. The stuff getting hammered appears to include storms like Franklin and Harvey. The result of the hammering seems to be shear. Not sure how accurate that analogy really is but that's what the images have me imagining.
http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/PS/TROP/DATA/RT/nwatl-wv-loop.html

Incidentally today's images appear to include a portion of the satellite that took them – perhaps part of its dish or something. Maybe it turned to get a little better look at the space shuttle's reentry (which was rescheduled due to weather).