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It shows Blue Hill Observatory, Massachusetts as the windiest city for the US.
That's because it's not a city — it's a weather station on the top of a hill. If you took all weather stations including mountaintop ones in the US , Mt. Washington would be the windiest by far.
In NZ at sea level (there are more extreme places on mountains of course), SouthWest Cape on Stewart Island's SW corner has a 24-hour average windspeed of 38kph (24mph). Its highest recorded 24 hour wind run so far is 3159km (so an average speed of almost 132kph or 82mph).
I would guess the Batanes islands between Luzon and Taiwan would be it. After all its located in an area where two bodies of water (the Pacific and the South China Sea) meet!
Sydney’s usually a windy place to be in when that westerly is blowing of course.
The highest gust - on record - of 150km/hr from the WSW was recorded on the 19th of January 1958.
However winds from the south, especially during the passage of a buster and to a lesser extent East Coast Lows, quarter has produced some of the strongest gusts on record too.
The highest-ever gust during a southerly buster was 113km/hr measured in the evening of 18th December 1948.
Australia–wide Perth is the windiest and Canberra the least.
Good luck in trying to track down those who took clips of Wellington's infamous wind - or better read as gale - and telling them to harden up . Either way 146km/hr is very windy for a built up and urban area, not even San Francisco has it that bad.
Last edited by koyaanisqatsi1; 11-23-2011 at 03:38 AM..
Good luck in trying to track down those who took clips of Wellington's infamous wind - or better read as gale - and telling them to harden up . Either way 146km/hr is very windy for a built up and urban area, not even San Francisco has it that bad.
You don't say. For the benefit of those who will be given a one-sided impression from your Wellington-bashing, a couple of points are in order.
(1) By far the strongest and most damaging winds a person will ever experience in New Zealand is in tornado events - which Wellington never gets (though the Kapiti coast to the north does - an area which vaunts itself as a superior version of the local climate - a pity that its sunshine average is actually somewhat less than in the city). NZ tornadoes occur predominantly along or near western coasts. The ones that have caused fatalities: Frankton near Hamilton in 1948, and of course the May 2011 event in Albany, Auckland - a recently arrived migrant was in a construction site hut. A tornadic gust of over 200kph picked the whole thing up and slammed it into a wall, and the unlucky chap died. I fancy my risk of harm to be lower where I live.
(2) Even ignoring tornadoes, Wellington is far from being the only place in NZ subject to strong wind events. An examination of monthly reports over the years shows vulnerability to ex-tropical events in the north and east of the North Island, and hurricane force westerly type events in other places. The worst wind I have personally experienced was not in Wellington, but in Invercargill on the notorious Tay-Dee corner - this was not Wellington gustiness, just a river of constant howling wind (May 1958)
(3) Damaging events in Australia: I attended a talk on disaster costs and mitigation at a met. conference, and was a little surprised to find how prominent a certain type was: the top event in dollar cost terms was a Sydney hailstorm!
"... Australia's most costly natural disaster in dollar terms was a severe hail storm over Sydney on 14 April 1999. Hail the size of cricket balls fell in a damage path that extended from Bundeena in the south to Darling Point in the North and from Sydenham in the west to Bondi Junction in the east. In total, over 20,000 properties and 40,000 vehicles were damaged during the storm with more than 25 aircraft damaged at Sydney Airport."
Since your comments on your own town's weather are somewhat less than objective, I suggest you moderate your commentary on other places.
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. Feel very sorry for that woman who got bowled over!
. Either way 146km/hr is very windy for a built up and urban area, not even San Francisco has it that bad.
