The hunters were flying in the storm like normal: http://tropicalatlantic.com/recon/recon....;product=vortex - Only once did they find surface winds above 74 and even that was an estimate. Make sense over water where you do not have instrumentation but once over land they knew it wasn't blowing that hard. Here is the Vero Beach Airport data: https://w1.weather.gov/data/obhistory/KVRB.html the highest gust I see was 58 and this location was pretty much dead center right after landfall. You can see when the eye passed over as the wind dropped to just 5 after blowing from N then switching to the S. Granted there were likely higher gust as they are only showing hourly data.

The wind speed problem has been going on for DECADES, I've complained about here before: https://flhurricane.com/cyclone/showflat...true#Post72872.

I am 90% sure Ian was rated a good +30 MPH above what was really going on, I look forward to the offseason reports because those contain verified ground data. I have no idea why the NHC continues to give what are clearly flight level winds. I get it - the storm is blowing and they measure those winds with an aircraft, but people live at sea level so the information should reflect that reality. Not only is the speed wrong but the wind field itself was way overstated. Ignoring the 7PM map mistake (which was hilarious) they still show Tampa getting TS winds right now. But local conditions (NOAA data from the airport) currently shows winds 24 gusting to 37... which, again by definition, is not at TS levels. I just don't understand the disconnect.