The Most Extreme Wind Speed Ever Recorded on Earth

Tropical Cyclone Olivia bore down on tiny Barrow Island, just off the coast of western Australia in April 1996.

An individual mesovortex, a smaller-scale circulation embedded within Olivia's eyewall, produced five extreme 3-second wind gusts, the peak of which was a 253 mph gust on April 10.

For reference, this brief gust was more than 11 mph faster than the Indy car world record of 241.428 mph by Gil de Ferran in 2000.

These extreme gusts weren't made public during the storm, as the anemometer was owned by a private company, Chevron. 

Even after the storm, forecasters at Australia's Bureau of Meteorology were made aware of this data but were suspicious of the data quality, given the values measured. A 2009 report had to be submitted to a weather and climate extremes committee of the World Meteorological Organization for the wind gusts to be considered.

In early 2010, this new world record surface wind speed became official.

Mount Washington's Legendary Winds

Before Tropical Cyclone Olivia's record-breaking gusts, the standard for surface winds was held atop the 6,288-foot summit of Mt. Washington, New Hampshire, coincidentally at roughly the same time of year.

Less than two years after its opening, observer Sal Pagliuca measured a 231-mph wind gust on April 12, 1934.

Pagliuca measured several gusts of at least 220 mph that day, but was concerned about the believability of these phenomenal measurements – to say nothing of his personal safety. A sustained 188-mph wind over five minutes was also measured.

Wind gusts of this magnitude, official or unofficial, are few given the failure of measuring equipment and/or power outages in extreme weather events.

Here are other notable wind gusts:

Incredible Irma

An unofficial wind gust of 199 mph was recorded by a land-based weather station when Hurricane Irma barreled through northeast Caribbean Islands in September 2017. 

The gust was measured by a Weather Underground personal weather station on the island of St. Barthélemy on Sept. 6, 2017.

The instrument was on a bluff by the Atlantic Ocean at an elevation of 50 feet, according to a Category 6 blog entry published by meteorologist Dr. Jeff Masters.

At the time, Irma was at its peak intensity as a Category 5 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 180 mph. St. Barthélemy took a direct hit from the eyewall of Irma which contains the most ferocious winds in hurricanes.

(RECAP: Hurricane Irma)

The weather station sampled winds in Irma's front eyewall and a portion of the back eyewall before it eventually succumbed when the pole it was mounted on broke.

Hurricane Gustav Pummels Western Cuba

The strongest surface wind gust on record for any Atlantic hurricane was recorded during Hurricane Gustav on Aug. 30, 2008.

A peak wind gust of 211.7 mph was clocked in Paso Real de San Diego, Cuba. This followed a period of rapid intensification in which Gustav strengthened from a Category 2 to a Category 4 hurricane.

After an investigation by the World Meteorological Organization, this was accepted as a world record for a tropical cyclone surface wind gust. Less than two years later, this gust was found to be less than that which occurred in Tropical Cyclone Olivia in 1996.

Also of note, this western Cuba station reported a one-minute sustained wind of 155 mph, bordering on Category 5 status.

The Strongest U.S. Hurricane Wind Gust on Record

The strongest U.S. hurricane wind gust recorded must have come from one of the only three hurricanes to make a Category 5 U.S. landfall, right. Not exactly, as the key word here is "recorded."

Hurricane Andrew in 1992 produced a peak wind gust at a private residence of 177 mph.

Hurricane Camille in 1969 was estimated to have maximum sustained winds of 175 mph at landfall on the Mississippi coast, but no weather instrument survived that lashing to take an actual measurement. According to the final report from the National Hurricane Center, an offshore oil rig was raked by gusts of 170 mph.

The most intense U.S. hurricane at landfall (by pressure), the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935, was estimated to have maximum sustained winds of 185 mph at landfall in the Florida Keys. Again, however, no instruments sampled that tempest.

Therefore, the strongest measured wind gust from a hurricane on U.S. soil is from the Sep. 1938 Long Island Express, a 186-mph gust at the Blue Hill Observatory in Milton, Massachusetts. The incredible forward speed of that New England hurricane (60 to 70 mph), in addition to the elevation of Blue Hill (635 feet above sea level), likely contributed to the extreme wind gust.

Strongest Tornadic Winds Measured

In the May 3, 1999, Bridge Creek/Moore/southeast Oklahoma City tornado, the "Doppler on Wheels" mobile research radar measured peak winds of 318 mph (with a margin of error of 20 mph) at a height of 105 feet above the ground. This F5 tornado was responsible for $1 billion in damage and 36 deaths.

More recently, a wind speed of 295 mph was measured just above the surface in the May 31, 2013, El Reno tornado by a mobile research radar from the University of Oklahoma.

200-plus-mph Winds ... in Greenland

The U.S. Air Force's northernmost base, Thule Air Force Base, is located about 750 miles north of the Arctic Circle in northwest Greenland, at a latitude of 76.5 degrees north.

On March 8, 1972, the strongest measured low-elevation wind speed on Earth not from a tropical cyclone or tornado was recorded here – a whopping 207 mph. That speed may be an underestimate, however. According to the U.S. Air Force report on this storm, the anemometer was both broken and blown away. One area near the base endured winds of 115 mph or higher – equivalent to a Category 3 hurricane – for more than seven hours and winds of 140 mph or higher for three hours (Category 4 hurricane).

At these wind speeds, rocks as big as baseballs were picked up and hurled considerable distances, according to the USAF report.

"At the worst point, the sides of the building where I work were constantly being pelted by huge rocks and chunks of ice," said weather observer Jack Stephens in the USAF report.