Wikipedia:WikiProject Tropical cyclones/Wind

Tropical cyclones
A tropical cyclone is a rapidly rotating storm system characterized by a low-pressure center, a closed low-level atmospheric circulation, strong winds, and a spiral arrangement of thunderstorms that produce heavy rain. Depending on its location and strength, a tropical cyclone is referred to by names such as hurricane ( or   ), typhoon, tropical storm, cyclonic storm, tropical depression, and simply cyclone. A hurricane is a storm that occurs in the Atlantic Ocean and northeastern Pacific Ocean, a typhoon occurs in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, and a cyclone occurs in the south Pacific or Indian Ocean.

On 10 April 1996, Cyclone Olivia passed near Barrow Island offshore northwest Australia. At 10:55 UTC, an automatic privately operated anemometer recorded a three-second wind gust of 408 km/h (253 mph), at a position 10 m above sea level. The Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) was initially unsure of the veracity of the reading, although a team at the 1999 Offshore Technology Conference presented the reading as the highest wind gust on Earth. In 2009, the World Meteorological Organization Commission for Climatology researched whether Hurricane Gustav, an Atlantic hurricane in 2008 produced a record 211 mph gust on Pinar del Rio, Cuba; one committee member recalled the gust set during Olivia, which spurred the investigation. Olivia's reading occurred along the western edge of the eyewall, possibly related to mesovortices. Based on other similarly high wind gusts during Olivia – 369 km/h and 374 km/h observed within five minutes of the record gust – the team confirmed that the instrument was observing properly during the storm. The same anemometer also recorded five-minute sustained winds of 178 km/h, causing a much greater than normal ratio of gusts to sustained winds. The team confirmed that the instrument was regularly inspected and calibrated, and that the reading was during the passage of the eyewall. On 26 January 2010, nearly 14 years after the storm, the World Meteorological Organization announced that the wind gust was the highest recorded worldwide. This gust surpassed the previous non-tornadic wind speed of 372 km/h (231 mph) on Mount Washington in the United States in April 1934. The long delay was partly due to the anemometer not being owned by the BoM, and as a result the agency did not enact a follow-up investigation.