"just heard 150 mph"

The recon is in. 915mb! temp diff up to 12 deg.

Daniel I know you said not until 11am, but you have to admit I almost called it; this is so very close. I thought the sat image definitely read explosive deepening and had the Cat 5 signature. Well it is a strong Cat 4, with pressure in Cat 5 range, and this along with the expanding windfield at the same time. Very impressive and if this deepening phase is not over then winds will catch up.

This pass was NW to SE. If there is another pass through the NE quad then we could see higher windspeeds.

OK NHC did just put out a special update to say Cat 4 gained strength and winds almost to 150mph. So it looks like that was the max flt wind for that recon or they would have waited.

Edit -- sat images show she is still growing. I don't know what to make of this except that there is just so much energy out there in the warm water that in addition to the intensification there is enough for the windfield to expand as well without impacting the intensification too much. Any thoughts on this?