Is BOM back to their old tricks?

TC Marcia is bearing down on the central Qld coast. The heading predicted will have landfall in sparsely populated country between Rockhampton and St Lawrence where damage will be minimal and no anemometer will be anywhere near it.

At 10 AM the forecast was for Cat 2 crossing the coast, rapidly decaying to Cat 1. The 3 PM tracking map has it predicted to be Cat 4 crossing the coast.  Nothing else has changed.

They did this last year with TC Ita which crossed the coast north of Cairns. In that case though there WAS an anemometer to record wind strength and it was an official BOM one and on line. I watched it and there were no gusts registered above 200 kPH, which is Cat 2 not Cat 4 as was being quoted and that was when the cyclone was virtually on top of it. It went offline then. Why? Either a professionally installed and maintained anemometer failed in 200 kPH winds when I assume it's designed max would have been close to 500 or they simply pulled the plug on embarrassing data.

Why the deception? One reason I suggest is that cyclones are greatly reduced in number in contrast to predictions of increasing number of storms. But by upgrading Cat 2 storms to 4 they can point to increased severity as proof of GW. There will be no reliable evidence to the contrary with Maria.