I also didn't see much dry air entrainment... Yes, there was dry out west of the cane, but that's likely self-induced! Most intense hurricanes induce strong subsidence (and thus drying) on the periphery of the hurricane. Given most Cat 4s, there's almost always going to be dry air near it, simply because it is Cat 4... Now, when you see entrainment of this year, it'll often look like a stream of dry air getting wrapped around and spiraling into the eye. I have not seen this in the past couple of days. The eye/center has almost always been surrounded by deep convection, and there hasn't been any "spiralling of dry air" towards the center that I could see on water-vapor loops... I'll try to find a good example of this and will post it on here if I can find one.
As for the weak 300-500mb winds Mike mentioned... He is correct.... HOWEVER, the shear was/is likely occurring ABOVE that, in the 100-200mb layer that Glen mentioned. The tropopause above many strong hurricanes in the tropics is anywhere from 75-150mb, considerably higher than the height of the tropopause over the continental US. Therefore, there is plenty of space for shearing above the 300mb case, which indeed likely was the case. Those higher plots (100-250mb) won't be on the SPC since that level trypically isn't involved in continental convection for which the SPC forecasts.
