Back to a cat 4 albeit high end. 155mph and pressure up a lot from last night 942mb. Lee definitely feeling the impacts of shear. You can see the restricted outflow on satellite in sw quadrant particularly.
Those are all valid points. Core was tiny and where it hit probably had no observation sites. As much as I would love to know the wind it produced on land, I'm glad it missed major population areas.
Wind reports seem very underwhelming for a high end cat 3 landfall. I guess part of that could be less populated area it's hitting. I haven't seen anything sustained hurricane wind reports or any gusts of major hurricane force.
I kind of figured it wasn't cat 4 anymore. I didn't think it would attempt an ewrc before landfall though because of fast forward motion but I was mistaken.
Halficane but instead of usual southern semi-circle being absent it's the eastern semi-circle. I know they kept it at 130mph cat 4 but I doubt it's cat 4 anymore imo. Regardless still going to be destructive esp with storm surge.
If I was chasing this I would definitely want to be on nw side for this one because of lack of precip on e to se side. Going to be harder to get those good hurricane winds aloft without precip to mix it down.
Nw eyewall is wicked. So much lightning and intense precip returns. To the east not so much. Definitely agree that Idalia has likely peaked. Should either hold steady till landfall or maybe slightly weaken.
Eye disappearing on satellite now. Not sure if that's because of intense convection to the west obscuring it or possible weakening or leveling out now after maxing out.
Still curious why eastern to southeastern quadrant looks like dry air ate up precip when there really isn't any dry air issues showing up on water vapor. It has a tight core but not much precip on eastern side except the feeder bands. Very odd.
Yeah I'm not sure it will make cat 4. Running out of time quickly. Landfall could be in next few hours. Idalia is flying nne. Incredible lightning burst right now. Is recon still in there?