So that explains the lopsided wind fields that danielw posted, and that would make sense since that is the part that is being fed with air from over land now. You could see it on radar but I wasn't sure if that was a true lack of precip on the SW or if the radar just couldn't see it that well at that distance.

Quite a change, but as you would expect the core still looks pretty solid.

If only this wasn't such a large storm...there is still going to be quite a lot of the core left on landfall even with the dramatic changes on the W side of the storm. And the E side, with the strong winds, will continue to be fed from the warm Gulf waters.

So is this what affects the motion and makes it go more east upon landfall? The storm becomes lopsided and so tends to be pulled from all the strong winds that are left on the east? I was wondering about this last night.