It's possible that the winds were (are) stronger than 175 mph... unfortunately, they did not get any good surface wind obs from any dropsondes into the eyewall during the last visit. They were using the standard 10% reduction from FL winds at 700mb. Dropsondes from the plane that was in there before the last one were showing surface winds very similar to the flight-level winds, so if that profile persisted, the surface winds may have been more in the 165 knot range. Given the very unusual structure of the system, the "by-the-book" reduction of flight-level winds may not have been appropriate, but it was all we have to go on.

Cloud tops have warmed a fair amount, but the overall organization still looks healthy. For the sake of posterity, I wouldn't mind if it holds near whatever it bottomed out at (the pressure was still falling like a rock when the recon plane left, so who knows how low the pressure got) until the next plane gets in there, and then I hope the inner core falls apart, which is bound to happen at some point soon.