Hello PeakVT,

Thxs for responding. You are probably right, but the NOAA document on CAT 5 Hurricane Andrew suggests that a hurricane can temporarily intensify over land even an hour after landfall given the right conditions:

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/1992andrew.html
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Andrew weakened when it passed over the western portion of the Great Bahama Bank and the pressure rose to 941 mb. However, the hurricane rapidly reintensified during the last few hours preceding landfall when it moved over the Straits of Florida. During that period, radar, aircraft and satellite data showed a decreasing eye diameter and strengthening "eyewall" convection. Aircraft and inland surface data Fig. 4 [121K GIF]) suggest that the deepening trend continued up to and slightly inland of the coast. For example, the eye temperature measured by the reconnaissance aircraft was at least 1-2C warmer at 1010 UTC (an hour after the eye made landfall) than it was in the last "fix" about 15 n mi offshore at 0804 UTC. These measurements suggest that the convection in the eyewall, and the associated vertical circulation in the eye and eyewall, became more vigorous as the storm moved onshore. The radar data indicated that the convection in the northern eyewall became enhanced with some strong convective elements rotating around the eyewall in a counter-clockwise fashion as the storm made landfall. Numerical models suggest that some enhancement of convection can occur at landfall due to increased boundary-layer convergence in the eyewall region. That situation appeared to have occurred in Andrew. The enhanced convection in the north eyewall probably resulted in strong subsidence in the eye on the inside edge of the north eyewall. This likely contributed to a displacement of the lowest surface pressure to the north of the geometric center of the "radar eye" (cf., Fig. 4 and 6 [107K JPEG]). It is estimated that the central pressure was 922 mb at landfall near Homestead AFB, Florida at 0905 UTC (5:05 A.M. EDT) 24 August (Fig. 4).

Andrew moved nearly due westward when over land and crossed the extreme southern portion of the Florida peninsula in about four hours. Although the hurricane weakened about one category on the Saffir/Simpson Hurricane Scale during the transit over land, and the pressure rose to about 950 mb, Andrew was still a major hurricane when its eyewall passed over the extreme southwestern Florida coast.
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Recall that Andrew was a small and tight CAT 5: so maybe porportionately the scale of Andrew/South Florida might be equivalent to a big area CAT 5 Dean/Yucatan. Will Dean continue to intensify two hours after making landfall? It might be only possible to compare this after Dean makes it Yucatan traverse; a post-mortem analysis much later like what was done for Andrew.

From the stormtrack projection it appears that Dean will be traversing the Yucatan in daylight or during the heating cycle. If there is sufficent warm rainwater on land plus lots more moist heat streaming into Dean from the outlying feeder bands-- it may not lose that much strength over land and/or nearly instantly regenerate in intensity as soon as the eye gets offshore. Thus, I speculate the Cat 2/3 boundary at offshore Cantarell/KMZ does not seem that far-fetched IMO.

Of course, I would gladly defer to expert opinion from NOAA.

Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?