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If you think about some of the strongest hurricanes in history(Camille/Andrew/etc), they weren't very large storms. More specifically their eyes weren't very large. I think it would take less heat/energy to build, maintain and strengthen a smaller stormso it's a bit easier to become very strong.

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Camille did not have an extremely small eye. A US Army Corp of Engineers map showed the eye to be 12 miles in diameter, centered over Waveland and going over the bay and part of Pass Christian at landfall.

There is also a story on the web of someone who lived in Gulfport in the College Park / Mississippi City subdivision, that makes the claim the eye passed over his home and they were in the eye for 45 minutes. Pass Christian is about 12 mi to the west. If this is true, the size of the eye would have been much much larger...but since the eye was travelling W of N I believe this story to be unlikely, especially because of the long time the survivor says the eye remained overhead. ALso all other information in the story is exagerrated; the highest winds were 220, not 230, and the highest storm surge was 25 ft, not 27 ft.

The storm was not small. I lived in Pascagoula, MS, which is way over on the east side of the MS Gulf Coast, and which sustained considerable damage from hurricane-force winds. The eye hit just about on the west end of the MS coastline, and the entire coastline sustained major damage. That is like saying if a similar size and intensity storm hit Pensacola where Dennis just did, every building right on the ocean between Gulf Breeze and Destin would be *completely* gone, with severe wind damage all the way out to Panama City (about 60 miles to the east of the eye).