That does sound a bit alarmist and frankly, kind of making a fleeting "well, maybe if, or YOU NEVER KNOW?" sort of historical analogy to a hurricane like Micheal that was much stronger and more intense where it was located in GOM than Zeta is now and yes, it actually was in a relatively warmer waters 2-3 weeks earlier 2 years ago. A couple of weeks, in terms of overall water temps creating and sustaining major hurricanes or allowing for rapid intensification, do matter a lot matter in context of Gulf as opposed to the Caribbean where this hung out and got organized until it decided what and where the fork it wanted to do and where to go and oh and BTW, the ocean Temps and lack of upper-level shear don't start hitting in until mid-November.
I'm sure most of these pro mets are only being sincere and genuine in raising this plausible scenario, and if they were on this site or most other Internet forum, they'd hope their wrong and just way over-thinking and perhaps unnecessarily overhyping a barely Cat 1 storm at most. But it still seems and sounds a bit alarmist while hiding behind a recent, but rarely occurring phenomenon where hurricanes get a steroid injection and add 60 mph winds as proof and if it doesn't happen, "Well, we're the first to say we're happy we were wrong and admit it now". That sounds like a very convenient, bullshirt excuse to avoid accountability and a more reasonable, sincere explanation to people living in New Orleans suburbs who aren't examining and analyzing these storms like curious, moving objects on an infrared, satellite screens in some underground, regional NHC war room.
The stakes and ramifications for New Orleans and how it's levees, drainage systems, length of power outages, possibility of local or city-wide disturbances, damage from flooding, storm surge, and wind damage is very significant from a Cat 1 to a borderline Cat 3. It's not fair and honestly, very unprofessional, IMHO, to throw out some "possible" dramatic increase in wind speed or damage to a TS thats currently 65 mph and shows no signs or surrounding environmental factors provide no strong, corroborating evidence it'll juice up big time before making landfall.
Super, 24 hours from now, Zeta will have already made landfall or just about to make landfall. There's maybe, MAYBE an outside chance that the storm reaches 90-95 mphs by the time it makes landfall, but even that's an unrealistic scenario and the damage estimates and scenarios accompanying it are far less severe than a borderline Cat 3 hurricane.