Beta certainly looks better than Cat 2 (so named in the 11pm) on IR right now. The eye seemed smaller (until the 0245Z, that is) and strong convection finally symmetric around the core.

I guess we won't know exactly how strong she is at landfall because outside of the two afternoon recons there were no others scheduled. The area of hurricane-force winds was extremely small (30nm), and remains that way in the advisory, but appears on sat that they might have spread further out.

Starting to get that sick train-wreck-in-slow-motion feeling. How many times have we gone through this, in the 2005 hurricane season.