The entire northwest and western side is sucking dry air from Louisiana and Texas. I think it is too much for Isaac to overcome (not that I am complaining). If it weren’t so slow moving, this could be a non-event. I suspect it has not been upgraded due to this dry air and the havoc it has created for organization. Now that it is organizing a bit, perhaps they will upgrade it. This is odd as they have been quick to upgrade everything for years to raise the storm count in support of Global Warming.
YOu may be right. With the pressures it is showing, if it gets the eye completely closed off and expels the dry air we could see it go from TS to CAT II quite quickly.
Hopefully that won’t happen, but right now we have a struggling 70 MPH system (according to NHC) with pressure readouts that support a 95-100 MPH storm.