Since April 1934, New Hampshire’s Mt. Washington held the world record wind gust at 231 mph. Sorry Mt. Washington fans, not any more.The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reported on January 22, 2010 that Mount Washington's world record had been broken. A wind gust of 253 mph during Typhoon Olivia on April 10, 1996, in Barrow Island, Australia has broken this record. A panel of WMO experts investigated the report, and this conclusion has been made after an extensive review of data, and an evaluation of the weather instruments used. I will decline to comment on why it took the WMO about 15 years to issue this report. (Oops... there I just did.)
The WMO Commission for Climatology provides more information about Global Weather and Climate Extremes at: http://wmo.asu.edu.
