Kent -- it's very likely at that time that Edna was undergoing extratropical transition at the time. Without satellite to confirm, there's no way to know exactly what was going on, but my best educated guess would be that the center of the system, while still a vigorous low, had become elongated as it was becoming extratropical.

The wind field expansion, as noted in the link that you provided, provides further evidence of the transition idea. It's not really likely to ever see a tropical cyclone with gale force winds outward up to 400mi from the center; that's much, much more common with midlatitude storms, however. And, that the strongest winds were not near the center at all gives further evidence of this as well.