Highest recorded land wind speed...

[DLANOIE]

...no longer held by Mnt. Washington. I heard this on the radio the other day. Apparently a mountain in Australia broke the record by about 20 MPH back in 1996, and it has taken this long for the records to catch up.

I was very disheartened by this news, but what are ya going to do?!

[fiddlehead]

Allowing Mt. Washington to claim the record all those years at least made people think strongly about going up there in bad weather and justly so. But...
They don't have many wind speed indicators in the Himalayas.

Do they still show that video up there of the guy serving corn flakes or something in 100 mph winds? That was very interesting.

[DLANOIE]

"They don't have many wind speed recorders in the Himalayans"

Good point! I suppose being from NH origionally makes me a bit proud of Mnt. Washington. Kinda silly I guess.

[Pedaling Fool]

...no longer held by Mnt. Washington. I heard this on the radio the other day. Apparently a mountain in Australia broke the record by about 20 MPH back in 1996, and it has taken this long for the records to catch up.

I was very disheartened by this news, but what are ya going to do?!
I don't believe the new record was recorded on a mountain. It was a cyclone (basically a hurricane) named Olivia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_speed An Excerpt:

During the passage of Tropical Cyclone Olivia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclone_Olivia) on 10 April 1996, an automatic weather station (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_weather_station) on Barrow Island (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrow_Island_(Western_Australia)), Australia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia), registered a maximum wind gust of 408 km/h (220 kt; 253 mph).[1] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_speed#cite_note-0) The wind gust was evaluated by the WMO Evaluation Panel who found that the anemometer was mechanically sound and the gust was within statistical probability and ratified the measurement in 2010.[2] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_speed#cite_note-Arizona-1) During the cyclone several extreme gusts of greater than 300 km/h (160 kt) were recorded, with a maximum 5 minute mean speed of 176 km/h (95 kt), the extreme gust factor was in the order of 2.27-2.75 times the mean wind speed. The pattern and scales of the gusts suggests that a mesovortex (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesovortex) was embedded in the already strong eyewall (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyewall) of the cyclone (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclone). [2] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_speed#cite_note-Arizona-1)

The second highest surface wind speed ever officially recorded is 372 km/h (231 mph) at the Mount Washington (New Hampshire) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Washington_(New_Hampshire)) Observatory in the US on 12 April 1934, using a heated anemometer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anemometer). The anemometer, specifically designed for use on Mount Washington, was later tested by the US National Weather Bureau (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Weather_Service) and confirmed to be accurate.[3] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_speed#cite_note-2) The highest surface wind speed ever officially recorded in Asia was recorded in Afghanistan on 14 August 2008: 328 km/h (204 mph) in Ab-Paran, Ghowr.

Windspeeds within certain atmospheric phenomena (such as tornadoes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tornado)) may greatly exceed these values but have never been accurately measured. The figure of 509 km/h (316 mph) during the F5 tornado in Moore, Oklahoma (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore,_Oklahoma) is often quoted as the highest surface wind speed but was measured 30 m (90 feet) above ground.



It's interesting to note that it is believed that tornadoes have much higher winds, but they cannot be measured with instruments.



.

[jersey joe]

The land wind speed record certainly added to the aura of mt. washington.

[Pedaling Fool]

Here's the explanation of why it took so long to register this new record. http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=1420

Excerpt:

Why did it take so long for the new record to be announced?
The instrument used to take the world record wind gust was owned by a private company, RPS MetOcean (now owned by Chevron), and the data was not made available to forecasters at Australia's Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) during the storm. After the storm, the tropical cyclone experts at BOM were made aware of the data, but it was viewed as suspect, since the gusts were so extreme and the data was taken with equipment of unknown accuracy. Hence, the observations were not included in the post-storm report. (http://www.bom.gov.au/weather/wa/cyclone/about/inland_pilbara/olivia.shtml) Steve Buchan from RPS MetOcean believed in the accuracy of the observations, and coauthored a paper on the record gust, presented at the 1999 Offshore Technology Conference in Houston (Buchan et al., 1999). The data lay dormant until 2009, when Joe Courtney of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology was made aware of it. Courtney wrote up a report, coauthored with Steve Buchan, and presented this to the WMO extremes committee for ratification. The report has not been made public yet, and is awaiting approval by Chevron. The verified data will be released next month at a World Meteorological Organization meeting in Turkey, when the new world wind record will become official.

This to me is just on simple(and small) illustration of how incomplete our understanding of weather is. This is just one weather event look at how incomplete our understanding was, and who knows how much more we don't know.

More info on Olivia and the station.
Tropical Cyclone Olivia
Tropical Cyclone Olivia was a Category 4 storm on the U.S. Saffir-Simpson scale, and generated sustained winds of 145 mph (1-minute average) as it crossed over Barrow Island off the northwest coast of Australia on April 10, 1996. Olivia had a central pressure of 927 mb and an eye 45 miles in diameter at the time, and generated waves 21 meters (69 feet) high offshore. According to Black et al. (1999), the eyewall likely had a tornado-scale mesovortex embedded in it that caused the extreme wind gust of 253 mph. The gust was measured at the standard measuring height of 10 meters above ground, on ground at an elevation of 64 meters (210 feet). A similar mesovortex was encountered by a Hurricane Hunter aircraft in Hurricane Hugo of 1989 (http://met.nps.edu/~mtmontgo/papers/i1520-0493-136-4-1237.pdf), and a mesovortex was also believed to be responsible for the 239 mph wind gust measured at 1400 meters by a dropsonde in Hurricane Isabel in 2003. (http://met.nps.edu/~mtmontgo/papers/isabel_part2.pdf) For reference, 200 mph is the threshold for the strongest category of tornado, the EF-5, and any gusts of this strength are capable of causing catastrophic damage.


Looks like this happened at about 210 feet above sea-level.


Here's some stats on Barrow Island http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_005058.shtml

[Pedaling Fool]

"Looks like this happened at about 210 feet above sea-level."

Correction -- ~220 feet

[Pedaling Fool]

"Looks like this happened at about 210 feet above sea-level."

Correction -- ~220 feet
Now I'm showing my ignorance....~243 feet....last word:o