Agree -- the core is quite small. It continued to hold up really well looking at the microwave, although the intensity looks to have dropped. JTWC kept the max winds at 155kts with #16, but I thought 155kts with #15 was conservative. Looking at the CIMSS history for the T number, they estimated it was still packing sust winds of 140kts even after the eye was completely over land.

I thought it would come apart a little more prior to landfall, but even at landfall still looked pretty darn impressive on IR (attached). And it looks like that one outflow channel was still there.

It is coming ashore in what appears to be an extremely unpopulated area...according to the Encarta map, Boucaut Bay and Hawkesbury Point probably receiving the highest wind, and only one settlement there, inland, Maningrida, that appears to be a small one. It is really taking a hook south and it looks like Darwin will miss the effects almost entirely.

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I fished around on the Australian BU web site and found some coastal weather station readings. The airport at Maningrida (which is a little inland at the base of a large estuary) reported a high gust of 80 kts as the core was just moving inland towards the southwest, and NW of their location, with the lowest pressure at 986.4mbar, but then stopped reporting, possibly because they lost electricity or because of surge.

After looking closely at all the sat images, it does appear that the closest approach of Monica to Maningrida was at about 6:30pm their local time (about 0930Z) when they did record the lowest pressure. If so, they never did get the highest winds from the extremely small core of the hurricane.

I did some more research and found out that Maningrida is an Aboriginal community of 2600 people (they have their own website too).

http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDD60700.shtml