the hook i got (from jeff masters blog) was sustained winds to 71mph, gusts in the 80s in tenerife... and a gust to 94mph in la palma. this stuff paired with the 60kt ship report northwest of the center yesterday does suggest the storm was a hurricane and was being operationally underrated. at times late last week it also had a banding eye structure, even though it was under modest shear and appeared to be vertically tilted at other times. it actually looks like epsilon will be the only one of the 'greek storms' to not affect land in some way, as alpha and gamma induced flood casualties in the caribbean, and beta hit nicaragua as a solid hurricane though luckily no one was killed. post-tropical delta is probably one of the worst storms of record in those islands--they tend to be dominated by subtropical high pressure and fair weather most of the time.
i sort of agree with margie on the whole subtropical classification thing. it isn't consistently used--at least, not like it was in the 1970s, though several of those systems would likely be considered tropical today. having a consistent policy on how these things are classified, as well as remaining consistent with the historic record... is pretty tough, apparently.
HF 1900z29november