Stephen Burt wrote:

On 27 Jan, 10:35, "Martin Rowley"
wrote:
... measured of course:

I'm grateful to Julian Heming for letting me know of this:-

Date: 10th April 1996
Barrow Island, Australia
113.2 m/s: 253 mph: 220 kn.

[ replaces the Mount Washington value of 103 m/s: 231 mph: 201 kn 12th
April 1934: this station is of course considerably higher than Barrow
Island, somewhere around altitude 1900 m / 6000 ft asl.]

More he-

http://wmo.asu.edu/world-maximum-surface-wind-gust

and a useful listing of all 'official/accepted' extremes he-

http://wmo.asu.edu/#global

... needless to say, Mount Washington are a little less impressed :-)

http://observatory.mountwashington.o...or/new_world_r...

Martin.

--
Martin Rowley
West Moors, East Dorset (UK): 17m (56ft) amsl
Lat: 50.82N * Long: 01.88W
NGR: SU 082 023

Oh dear, I can well imagine noses getting out of joint at MWO over
this! I've been there a couple of times and the 'world wind speed
record' it is almost the entire basis of their tourist industry. The
view on a clear day, however, is superb and it must be a fabulous
place to be a weather observer. Even on one of my trips in early May
the rime on the TV mast was still 2-3 m long.

As I recall, since their record 201 kn gust in 1934, their highest
since has been around 185 kn, so this 220 kn will clearly take some
beating ...

Looking at Barrow Island on Google Earth, there doesn't seem to be
much to stop the wind at all - I hope it's a remote site because I
assume not much would have survived the typhoon. Amazing that the
anemometer and logger (and their power supply ...) did so. Here, we
lose power if the wind gusts even to 30 kn.

A gust of 205 kn was measured in Guam in typhoon "Paka" on 16 Dec 1997 with a
hot-wire anemometer. At the time, there was quite a bit of discussion about the
reliability of this measurement. I don't know what the conclusion was but it
seems that it was never accepted as a new world record.

--
Norman Lynagh
Tideswell, Derbyshire
303m a.s.l.