What is the strongest recorded wind?
Wind speed
The fastest wind speed not related to tornadoes ever recorded was during the passage of Tropical Cyclone Olivia on 10 April 1996: an automatic weather station on Barrow Island, Australia, registered a maximum wind gust of 408km/h (220kn; 253mph; 113m/s).[2] 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. The anemometer was mounted 10 m above ground level (and thus 64 m above sea level). During the cyclone, several extreme gusts of greater than 300km/h (160kn; 83m/s) were recorded, with a maximum 5-minute mean speed of 176km/h (95kn; 110mph; 49m/s), 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 suggest that a mesovortex was embedded in the already strong eyewall of the cyclone.[3]
Typhoon Haiyan
Thereafter, it continued to intensify; at 12:00 UTC on November 7, the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) upgraded the storm's maximum ten-minute sustained winds to 230 km/h (145 mph), the highest in relation to the cyclone. The Hong Kong Observatory put the storm's maximum ten-minute sustained winds at 285 km/h (180 mph) prior to landfall in the central Philippines, while the China Meteorological Administration estimated the maximum two-minute sustained winds at the time to be around 78 m/s (280 km/h or 175 mph). At the same time, the JTWC estimated the system's one-minute sustained winds to 315 km/h (195 mph), unofficially making Haiyan the strongest tropical cyclone ever observed based on wind speed, a record which would then be surpassed by Hurricane Patricia in 2015 at 345 km/h (215 mph). Haiyan is also tied with Typhoon Meranti in 2016 as the second-strongest tropical cyclone in the Eastern Hemisphere by 1-minute sustained winds; several others have recorded lower central pressure readings. At 20:40 UTC on November 7, the eye of the cyclone made its first landfall in the Philippines at Guiuan, Eastern Samar at peak strength. Gradually weakening, the storm made five additional landfalls in the country before emerging over the South China Sea. Turning northwestward, the typhoon eventually struck northern Vietnam as a severe tropical storm on November 10. Haiyan was last noted as a tropical depression by the JMA on the following day.