Fastest wind speed ever recorded in the world

The strongest wind in the solar system is located at Neptune, where winds blow at supersonic speeds of 1,770 km/h, 1.5 times faster than the speed of sound, according to NASA. On Earth, wind tunnels can create supersonic winds, with speeds faster than 1,225 km/h at sea level. The 10×10 Hypersonic Wind Tunnel at NASA’s Glenn Research Center, for example, can generate wind speeds of up to Mach 3.5 (4,321 km/h), according to Live Science.

The maximum natural wind speed ever recorded is 407 km/h, according to the World Weather and Climate Extremes Archive database of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). This record was recorded on Barrow Island, Australia, on April 10, 1996 when a tropical storm swept across the remote island. Windmeter, a device that usually has 3 cups that rotate around a central axis when the wind blows, at the meteorological station on the island measures the wind for 3 – 5 seconds.

It was more than a century later that the WMO saw the data and confirmed it in the record books because Barrow Island is owned by the oil company Chevron. Randall Cerveny, a professor of geosciences at the University of Arizona, and his colleagues were in charge of verifying the record. They flew to Australia and found that the anemometer was still intact and working well, with no unusual data. WMO only records wind speed data from devices such as anemometers because it is a physical measurement of the wind, according to Cerveny. That means many of the recorded wind speeds are faster than the winds on Barrow Island, but they were measured using estimation equipment or calculations, so cannot be recorded in the record books.

However, anemometer measurements have some limitations. Equipment racks are easily damaged in fierce winds and they can only be placed where people can reach them. For example, it is difficult to deploy anemometers at altitudes of 6 – 13 km in the jet stream. Jet streams are very fast streams of air that can reach speeds of 443 km/h, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Cerveny and his colleagues are currently studying jet speed data of 483 km/h above Japan and the Western Pacific, which has record-breaking potential. This is the result of direct measurement of the wind using a device called a scout attached to a weather balloon. “It was probably the strongest wind we’ve ever seen on Earth,” Cerveny said.

Another way to measure wind speed is to use Doppler radar. Radar data is not used by WMO to record wind speed records because it is a remote estimate, not a direct measurement. The radar transmits a pulse of energy that scatters raindrops or water droplets in clouds and measures the reflected energy. The device repeats the process and calculates the difference between measurements, thereby calculating how fast the raindrop is moving, according to Joshua Wurman, director of the FARM (Flexible Array of Radars and Mesonets) facility at the University. Alabama at Huntsville. The biggest advantage of radar is that it can measure things that are very far away, including fast-moving tornadoes.

Wurman studies tornadoes with a “Doppler on Wheels”, a radar device mounted on the back of a large truck. This method allowed him to track tornadoes and map them using radar without direct contact. If winds can be determined using physical measuring equipment from inside a tornado, researchers will need to create new catalogs to reflect the extreme data. Wurman and his colleagues measured the highest tornado wind speed in 1999 in Bridge Creek, Oklahoma, up to 486 km/h, according to WMO. Recently, Wurman’s team calculated wind speeds of 497 – 512 km/h in a tornado that swept through Greenfield, Iowa, in May 2024. But errors in radar estimates mean the new data is essentially equivalent to the 1999 record.