Landfall intensity vs. impact rating

[gymengineer]

I recently queried AOML why Hurricane Nicole (2022) was missing from the list of landfalling US hurricanes; the TCR for Nicole had a 65-kt landfall at Vero Beach, FL: https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/hurdat/All_U.S._Hurricanes.html

Surprisingly, Chris Landsea himself answered. The reason is that Nicole’s hurricane force winds at the time of landfall were not hitting land. They were clearly over water. So, Nicole was assigned as 60-kts on the tropical storms list: https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/hurdat/uststorms.html

That reminded me of Hurricane Jeanne’s (2004) TCR, which explained that it was not determined whether the 105-kt winds at landfall made it onshore or remained over water. Mr. Landsea confirmed that Jeanne’s landfall was given the benefit of the doubt and therefore made it onto the landfall list as a Category 3 impact for FL. 
 

I wonder, as sources of data become richer and richer, whether we will see more discrepancies between an official landfall windspeed and what the impact rating ends up being. 
 

In other words, if every hurricane landfall is analyzed for whether the strongest winds at the time of landfall were in an onshore orientation, would that require many more mismatches between the two official sources?  

 

[gymengineer]

Here are the TCRs. Again, Nicole ended up being downgraded to a tropical storm rating for the landfall list, while Jeanne kept its Category 3 landfall/impact.

Nicole: https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/data/tcr/AL172022_Nicole.pdf (page 5 is especially relevant)

Jeanne: https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/data/tcr/AL112004_Jeanne.pdf (page 2 is especially relevant)