@Siff
Hello, I'm in Sint-Maarten and I survived Irma (My house didn't). REAL wind values have been constantly updated, thanks to NOAA planes flying through the hurricane constantly. They are today the only way to give us real wind data during such storms (because instruments on the ground fly away). During the peak intensity just before Irma hits sint maarten, they measured 225 mph wind gusts in the eyewall of the hurricane, and sustained wind of 185 mph. We had an anemometer here in Grand-Case airport. the last wind gust measured by the instrument before it broke was 135 mph 2 hours before the eyewall. Everything is destroyed here.
Models like GFS and ECMWF cannot predict hurricane winds, especially close to the eye, where the wind is the strongest, because the resolution scale of these models is not wide enough (this is the main reason to me). In the front of the hurricane, there is northerly wind with strong updrafts, 7 kms away, in the eye there is no wind and a strong downdraft, and the 7km away there is a strong southerly wind with updrafts again ! All of that with huge changes in pressure. It's so powerful in a so small area ! That's why they created the Hurricane Weather Research and Forecasting model(HWRF). It is the only model using recon aircraft data, satellite imagery and buoys data at the same time !!! And it is the more precise model to predict hurricane wind direction and force (not the path of the hurricane).
So, regarding wind force and direction, the more you are close to the eye, the more GFS and ECMWF model will be inaccurate. But these models are better to predict the path of hurricanes, they work well on bigger scales !
