From a “look perspective” it’s hard to imagine how a storm could be any stronger presentation wise about 5-8 hours ago. It definitely degraded since recons departed and even more so once recon arrived. A small tight core like Sam has it wouldn’t take much degradation for wind speed to come down quickly, unlike larger storms. There is literally zero hard evidence to support a cat 5 from earlier. However, sat estimates almost always fail to get the exact intensity and have a low bias for tiny storms, like Sam. It would honestly shock me if this didn’t peak at least 140 kts just from the ferocity of that satellite shot and the speed those eyewall towers were moving. Also, the pressure is consistent with a cat 5 storm of this size. That being said, there is zero hard evidence this made it to cat 5 and then does it really matter if it only maintained that intensity for a couple of hours? To us, yes, but NHC issues advisories based on intensity at time of advisory or based on hard evidence between them. Lacking the latter, this is going to stay a 4 in post analysis. Ida has a chance for an upgrade bc there was hard evidence, from wind measurements on land, recon, and pressure that it did reach the threshold. This to me was likely a stronger storm at peak but will be very unlikely to be upgraded without the hard evidence of nonstop recon and ground truth.