I thought so...but wasn't sure.

Practically all day I've been convinced Wilma will get to Cat 5 (but not today!). I just found out from reading Steve Gregory's update that the water temps in that area of the Caribbean are actually still a couple of degrees warmer than the SSTs, below the surface. I was glad to see this because as I posted early this morning, I expected Wilma to hit the warm deep water starting Thursday (then pulled that back to Wed aft/evng as her speed increased) on through Friday. I was wondering where I'd gone wrong reading the HHC map, because I didn't expect Cat 4/5 this evng. Steve, while being a litle behind the eight ball on this one (he's been busy with a family emergency), nevertheless managed to provide, as he almost always does, some interesting and relevant piece of information. Anyway that explains the rapid intensification tonight.

The dry air on the periphery may prove to be a limiting factor on initial organization, particularly in terms of dry air intrusion, but once the inner core becomes established, it can actually help to supress the outer banding features and lead to a very tight inner core that can spin up in quite a hurry.

I felt something along these lines earlier in the evng when I posted that the feeder bands, being partially separated by the dry air from the center convection, were more easily being as I thought of it "sloughed off" to leave the pure central convective core. I've seen several times now where the irregular or banding features are let go and separated from the central rounded core, as part of the intensification process.

But I also noticed that even in the purest smoothest central core visual sat images, such as Katrina's when her winds were at their peak, the seeds of the original spiral bands are still somehow maintained, because when weakening occurs, then the consistency of the CDO falls away and spiral banding again becomes evident (as could be seen with Katrina once the dry air and land started having an affect, before LA landfall).