we re talking about a matter of a couple of miles an hour here. mostly just for the history books, it doesn t look like we ll get a category 4 at landfill but looks like we ll have landfill of a strong category 3 major hurricane. again just for the history book, doesn t really matter, this is perry, florida, where our crews are located. the northern eye wall, the strongest winds are now approaching this area, and this is where some of the first extreme wind damage will be occurring so we ll keep an eye on it. the trees blowing like this, that s like 40, 50-mile-per-hour gusts. they re not in the eye quite yet. updates every hour and moving at 18 miles per hour so moving onshore pretty quickly. you can see the center. it was a little narrow little pin eye, that s where the strongest winds were. notice how it s fallen apart a little bit. it looks like we re going an eye replacement cycle is taking place and that tiny eye is dissipating and a larger circumference eye is trying to take
the air is to look at some of these outer bands and the moich reaches far to the north but there is another thing as our meteorology group was looking at the images you can really study what that eye is doing and what the outer bands are doing and what the core of the hurricane-force winds are doing as it pulled away from the coast of cuba. and really increased. now has supporting winds of 130 miles an hour but undergoing an eye replacement cycle. you have probably heard that a lot. the inner wall starts to collapse in on itself and there are indications now that we are seeing that eye wall replacement cycle. there is not a cocentric look.
means that those 100-mile-per-hour winds are going to be right onshore, if not further onshore, carol. all right, jennifer, thanks so much. she s reporting live for us this morning from palm bay. i want to head to the weather center now to check in with chad. so chad, currently this storm is a category 3. how strong are the winds? the winds are 120. we just had a wind sustained from the hurricane hunter aircraft at 116. so they are measuring that 120 still. the reason why it s not 140 anymore, or 145 like it was forecast to be is because there s not an inner eyewall anymore. we went through what s called an eye replacement cycle. which was the core, which we didn t get at andrew, we didn t get that core to break up before it hit homestead, that core broke up overnight and now we only have an outer core. so like an ice skater with one foot on the ground spinning around with her arms out, she s spinning slowly.