By the evening of October 5, Nora had attained winds in excess of , ranking it as a Category 5-equivalent super typhoon on the Saffir–Simpson hurricane scale. A recon mission into the storm at this time revealed concentric eyewalls, measured at and . Initially, the aircraft was unable to penetrate into the core of the eye due to severe turbulence; however, they were successful after a second attempt. Once inside the eye, they discovered an almost cloud-free center with "an amphitheater or bowl-like appearance." Stratocumulus clouds were suppressed to an unusually low altitude of . The core of Nora was exceptionally warm, with temperatures reaching a near-record at the 700 mb level. At 0020 UTC on October 6, a dropsonde released by the reconnaissance team recorded a surface pressure of 877 mb (hPa; 25.91 inHg) just inside the eyewall of the typhoon. At this time, maximum winds were estimated to have peaked at . This intensity ranked Nora as the most-intense tropical cyclone on record in the world, alongside Typhoon Ida in 1958. However, in post-storm analysis, it was noted that since the dropsonde did not record a pressure at the storm's center, Nora was likely slightly stronger than indicated. Since then, Nora's intensity has been surpassed by three other storms: Typhoon June in 1975, Typhoon Tip in 1979, and Hurricane Patricia in 2015.