I failed to look at the aircraft altittude. Shame on me. The surface winds at the 1500 foot level would be fairly close to the 1500ft level winds. I'll have to look up the NHC correction and see what they use.
Judging from the latest Advisory it must be close to 95% of Flight Level Winds at 1500ft.

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/aboutwindprofile.shtml#fig1

The strongest winds in the eyewall are found near 500 m (1600 ft) elevation; these are about 20% higher than the 700 mb wind, owing to the warm-core nature of the tropical cyclone.

note: this refers to the Eyewall winds.~danielw