Highest upper-level wind speed in history

[Tim Vasquez]

OK, unfortunately this post is going to be a bit of a letdown. I've found too much noise in the data and don't have time to sort through it all. However you all can take a stab at if if you like... the data dump of all 200-299 kt winds at 200, 250, and 300 mb in North America 1945-2006 is located here: http://www.weathergraphics.com/tim/maxwind.htm

Poking around I did find one prospect that looks reasonable, and that's the 208 kt (239 mph) wind seen at GYX in Maine on this chart (Jan 5 1999 at 12Z). It's almost suspect but there's a 185 kt wind at Nova Scotia. OK, 239 mph beats the Mount Washington record by 8 miles an hour, so I'm onto something for this date. I haven't even begun looking at other dates, though.

JANUARY 5, 1999 1200 UTC
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Should anyone want to poke around, there's the SPC map archive (from where the above chart came from) at http://www.spc.noaa.gov/obswx/maps/ and for before 1998 there's the DWM rescue site at http://docs.lib.noaa.gov/rescue/dwm/data_rescue_daily_weather_maps.html . If anyone tackles any of this it's going to be interesting to see the outcome.

208 knots... do I hear 209?

Tim

 

[cdcollura]

Good day everyone,

This one (below) is pretty fast too ;-)

Winds over 150 Knots (175 MPH+) at 300 MB ... I would love to be an airline pilot flying east, but west, not!

 

[Jeff Snyder]

We're a ways away today, but the 12z BIS sounding earlier today showed 178kts at 272mb. It's a bit windy up there...

A couple possible tropopause folds on some soundings as well... ILX is interesting, with a very deep inversion/isothermal layer starting at 650mb! I'd call it a tropopause fold if the winds didn't increase so much through that layer...

Plenty of stratospheric air in the 250-400mb layer as well, as evidenced by the high potential vorticity (magnitude and aerial extent) seen at http://www.spc.noaa.gov/exper/mesoanalysis/s4/padv.gif