Hurricane Fabian was officially classified as a Category 4 hurricane today at 5:00 PM Eastern time. The monster storm may now be approaching Category 5 intensity — or it may have already achieved it, and then perhaps weakened a bit. It’s hard to say for sure. Officially, Fabian remains a Cat. 4, with 140 mile-per-hour winds, as of 11:00 PM.

According to the National Hurricane Center’s meteorological discussion, the most recent intensity estimates from various satellite-based estimation formulas put Fabian at somewhere between 145 mph and 160 mph. (Category Five, the highest category on the Saffir-Simpson scale, is 156 mph and up.)

But the Hurricane Center is keeping Fabian at 140 mph for now, saying “cloud tops have also warmed during the past couple of hours…and the convection to the northeast has eroded somewhat.” I also suspect, again, that there may be some political caution at work: the NHC is generally extremely reluctant to call a hurricane Category Five without hard data. For instance, I’m convinced that Hurricane Edouard in 1996 reached Category Five intensity over the open ocean, but it was never upgraded because it was too far east to send a reconaissance plane out, and by the time the planes got to it, it had weakened. (The same may prove to be the case here, if Fabian indeed reached 160 mph earlier today and has now weakened a bit.)

Anyway, the first Air Force recon plane is on its way out there now, so by the 5:00 AM advisory, we’ll have a better idea of Fabian’s true strength. As the Hurricane Center says with classic understatement, “Air Force recon…should provide some rather interesting intensity data.”

In the mean time, we can continue to marvel at the storm’s beauty — and its power. These enormously powerful hurricanes are incredible machines, to the point that they create their own environment and can even, in a sense, begin to consume themselves. If Fabian is weakening now, the cause is probably “eyewall collapse,” which invariably happens with these huge storms: the storm’s inner core gets so tightly wound that it begins to collapse in on itself, temporarily weakening the storm while a new eyewall forms. It’s fascinating to observe.

Anyway, stay tuned. In the mean time, here’s an image of Fabian from earlier today:

UPDATE: I wish this was Jim Cantore’s shift on the Weather Channel. I’m sure his eyes would be practically bugging out of his head marveling at this storm. :)

Anyway, here is the latest map of computer-model forecasts regarding Fabian’s likely track:

If it follows something resembling the red or orange tracks, I expect it will almost certainly miss the East Coast — once hurricanes make that hard right turn, they pretty much always keep turning and head out to sea. On the other hand, if it follows a track that’s more like the yellow, blue, or green paths, everybody from Florida to New England will have to keep an eye (so to speak) on it.