After passing through the Leeward Islands, the hurricane turned to a northerly drift with continued intensification. On September 5, it attained wind speeds that would be equivalent to a Category 4 hurricane on the present-day Saffir-Simpson scale, with sustained winds of . Operationally, the wind intensity value was estimated by Hurricane Hunters at when the hurricane was located about south-southwest of Bermuda; this estimate is now believed to have been an overestimation of the peak winds in Hurricane Dog, though the storm produced enormous wave heights at sea.