Okay, I got this question........see if you can folllow my logic here and understand the gist of my quandry.
Say a Cat 3 is barreling towards Florida and conditions are so unfavorable that it knocks it from a Cat 3 to a Cat 1 before it strikes land......And now take a very strong Cat 5 storm and it follows the same exact path as the Cat 3 in my example and faces the exact identical conditions......Would that CAT 5 then diminish to a Cat 1 as well or would it hold up better and only diminish to a Cat 3 or 2?
My guess is that it would hold up better and hit as a 2 or 3 considering how much weakening it has to do. The problem is that we can't rerun it as a three to test the question. I remember some 5's that were heading towards LA last year I believe (the names all tend to run together after a while) which weakened dramatically JUST before landfall.
A question of my own... Has Wilma increased in size or is it my imagination? I remember reading earlier that it was very tight with hurricane force winds extending only a short distance from the eye. It looks pretty big to me now.