[Puckster]

The basis of what I had inferred, given the website link, was that there appeared to be a disconnect between observed wind speeds on the ground, including my sons house very near the the centers wall at Portsmouth, VA and NOAA’s stated wind speeds. And yes, in the absence of enough data from ground or sea sources, they will extrapolate ground wind speeds from known wind speeds higher in the atmosphere.

[Kirkwood]

Yes, NOAA also uses models based on dropsonde data from aircraf, and not just surface data. I think this was an unusual storm with high speed winds aloft, but tropical storm winds near the ground. I've seen this reported elsewhere. Anyway, something may have gone kaflooey in the model because the NOAA statements were reporting wind speeds with a 50 to 100% higher velocity than what they should have been. The gust speeds were somewhat closer to what they were reporting for sustained speeds, but even those were lower. I don't think it was a “conspiracy”, but just something odd about the conditions in the storm itself. I'm sure somewhere some meteorologists are scratching their heads over this.