David,,, Agreed!
Also interesting is the warming of the cloud tops. Certainly a 9mb drop in a few hours would signify rapid deepening... The winds may not be responding to the deepening, however, given the weakening of convection throughout the hurricane. There is typically a nocturnal upswing in convection, which certainly could bring those winds up to Cat 3 strength. Per the Melbourne radar, the (outer?) eyewall is probably 10 miles off Jupiter Beach/Island/Inlet. Gusts of 80-90mph continue to occur in this area as well.
EDIT: SPC recently issued a tornado watch for much of central and northern FL. Low-level shear is very impressive, with 0-1km helicity of 250-450 per SPC Mesoanalysis, which, if I recall, is considerably greater than with Charley. Luckily, night has come, so there will be no more solar heating to destabilize the area. Forced convection, associated with Frances, however, should be able to tilt and stretch the strong vorticity in the near-surface layer effectively enough to produce tornadoes... Melbourne radar is showing quite a bit of cellular convection off the east coast, which should come inland in the next couple of hours. It'll be interesting to see if Frances will become a signficant tornado producer as well...
