Highest Wind Speeds in your area

[snowc]

this post was from a former user on this forum, which has now left.

[Restored subject line, which was deleted by the user for no good reason. -S.]

[skluth]

Last night's winds forecast at 10 PM

That was down from earlier in the day when Palm Springs had winds up to 40 mph. San Gorgonio Pass gets the worst winds (that's why all the wind turbines are there) and yesterday Whitewater had a peak gust of 61 mph. It's not unusual for winds in the pass to exceed 60 or even 70 mph, but I don't recall any exceeding 80 mph so that's probably rare. I live near the "P" in Palm Springs which means I'm on the lee side of the +10,000' Mt San Gorgonio and only 1 in 10 wind events in the pass are also a wind event on the south side of Palm Springs. Yesterday's was one of those 1 in 10 events as winds not only funneled through the pass but through the lower mountains (5000' ridge southwest rather than 9000' ridge directly west) southwest of Palm Springs.

[Scott5114]

302 mph.

[Rothman]

302 mph.

Tornado...

[Scott5114]

302 mph.

Tornado...

Still qualifies according the question as written.

So, to ask the question, what has been the highest wind speeds in your area?

[US 89]

The greater Salt Lake City area especially north of SLC is known to experience extreme downslope windstorms from the Wasatch Mountains from time to time, which have produced gusts in excess of 100 mph...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Davis_County_windstorm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Utah_windstorm

[Bruce]

The Northwest's winter windstorms have brought some nice records, including 81 mph in Everett and 100 mph in Renton back in 1962. https://climate.washington.edu/stormking/SeattleBigStorms.html

Overall they just do enough to bring down weak trees to block roads and destroy power lines.

[Billy F 1988]

It doesn't get very windy often in Western Montana, but during a recent thunderstorm not too long ago, I think c. 2013 or might have been '14 or '15, but, Missoula recorded 75 MPH at the airport, enough to topple an old oak tree near Russell Street. Missoula's last known microburst wind recorded was back in c. 2002 that toppled my mother's mobile home in Huson.

[CoreySamson]

It's actually not that uncommon, at least at my southern location within the Houston metro, to get winds over 20 mph (it's at 25 as we speak) after cold fronts in the winter and spring. The average wind speed hovers around 10 mph most of the year here, even during the summer. Breezes from the coast and afternoon popup showers provide a bit of relief during the summer. Thunderstorms and hurricanes can bring higher winds, of course (between the two of them, we probably get tropical storm force winds at least once per year). Hurricane Nicholas just last fall brought minimal hurricane force winds to my area.

[kphoger]

It's actually not that uncommon, at least at my southern location within the Houston metro, to get winds over 20 mph (it's at 25 as we speak) after cold fronts in the winter and spring. The average wind speed hovers around 10 mph most of the year here, even during the summer.

Everyone in Abilene ought to be snickering at you right now.

Where I grew up, in northwestern Kansas, anything under 30 mph was called "light breezes" on the weather report.  Not even worth mentioning.

[allniter89]

I wish I had an anemometer. We've had several hurricanes with landfalling winds of 130 but I'm 30 miles from the coast so probably much lower here. I dont recall any winds doing damage nearby.

[gonealookin]

The Sierra Nevada crest routinely gets wind speeds well over 100 mph during even moderate storms.  Here's the regular automated report from the ridgeline at Palisades Tahoe (formerly "Squaw Valley", the 1960 Winter Olympics site).  Of course there's nothing up there except some ski facilities which get shut down when the wind gets above certain criteria.

At lower elevations, Washoe Valley between Reno and Carson City gets some nasty crosswinds that sometimes force the closure of I-580 through there to high-profile vehicles. 

[Road Hog]

It's actually not that uncommon, at least at my southern location within the Houston metro, to get winds over 20 mph (it's at 25 as we speak) after cold fronts in the winter and spring. The average wind speed hovers around 10 mph most of the year here, even during the summer.

Everyone in Abilene ought to be snickering at you right now.

Where I grew up, in northwestern Kansas, anything under 30 mph was called "light breezes" on the weather report.  Not even worth mentioning.

30 mph in DFW will get a mention but it's not out of the ordinary. Lately it's associated with fire weather warnings, which has been as bad as I've seen it in more than a decade.

[wxfree]

It's actually not that uncommon, at least at my southern location within the Houston metro, to get winds over 20 mph (it's at 25 as we speak) after cold fronts in the winter and spring. The average wind speed hovers around 10 mph most of the year here, even during the summer.

Everyone in Abilene ought to be snickering at you right now.

Where I grew up, in northwestern Kansas, anything under 30 mph was called "light breezes" on the weather report.  Not even worth mentioning.

30 mph in DFW will get a mention but it's not out of the ordinary. Lately it's associated with fire weather warnings, which has been as bad as I've seen it in more than a decade.

Sustained wind of 25 to 30 or higher, or gusts above 40, is enough to get a wind advisory from the Fort Worth NWS office.

And speaking of fire, today NWS issued fire warnings for some of the counties to the west.  I don't think I've ever seen fire warnings.

[hotdogPi]

This area has gotten temporary power outages from sustained winds in the mid-20s.

[I-55]

I remember overnight winds of ~90 mph that causes several trees to fall a few years ago.

[Scott5114]

It's actually not that uncommon, at least at my southern location within the Houston metro, to get winds over 20 mph (it's at 25 as we speak) after cold fronts in the winter and spring. The average wind speed hovers around 10 mph most of the year here, even during the summer.

Everyone in Abilene ought to be snickering at you right now.

Where I grew up, in northwestern Kansas, anything under 30 mph was called "light breezes" on the weather report.  Not even worth mentioning.

30 mph in DFW will get a mention but it's not out of the ordinary. Lately it's associated with fire weather warnings, which has been as bad as I've seen it in more than a decade.

Currently in Norman the wind speeds are 28 MPH gusting to 37. This doesn't seem particularly out of the ordinary for a spring day. There are some fire warnings out because of how dry it's been in the west (and indeed there are some wildfires up in the northwest part of the state) but 37 mph isn't otherwise as calamitous as the OP seems to think.

[Billy F 1988]

Missoula is anticipating 40 to 60 MPH sustained gusts upon an encroaching cold front plummeting temperatures 30 degrees below the normal for April. However, some localized areas may see up to 70 MPH, locally high snowfall up to around 2 feet or so in the higher elevations. Last I checked the local NWS observation for Missoula, it read 9 MPH, but at times it can kick up to 30 in Hellgate Canyon and funnel outward. Most of Western Montana and Northern Idaho are under High Wind Warnings until around Tuesday.

[Rothman]

I jist followed high winds -- up to 75 mph gusts -- on a trip across Nebraska.  Had to keep to my schedule.  It was frustrating that warm weather moved in the day after we left a location...day after day...

[jlam]

165 mph about 14 years ago

[zachary_amaryllis]

we had some 75 mph winds a few days ago. i saw something fly by my window, pretty sure it was the cat.

[gonealookin]

The Sierra Nevada crest routinely gets wind speeds well over 100 mph during even moderate storms.  Here's the regular automated report from the ridgeline at Palisades Tahoe (formerly "Squaw Valley", the 1960 Winter Olympics site).  Of course there's nothing up there except some ski facilities which get shut down when the wind gets above certain criteria.

At lower elevations, Washoe Valley between Reno and Carson City gets some nasty crosswinds that sometimes force the closure of I-580 through there to high-profile vehicles.

Following up, we had a spring storm blow through yesterday.  Here's a report from the National Weather Service in Reno.  Nobody lives at the places where the gusts got over 80 mph, but the ones in the 70s are in neighborhoods and from NDOT sensors on highways.

[JayhawkCO]

96 mph gust during our Bomb Cyclone in 2019.

I also climbed Pikes Peak on this day:


That was brutal.

[MikieTimT]

143 MPH back on Mar. 30.

https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2022/apr/07/governor-tours-springdale-tornado-damage/

[wxfree]

I remember back in the late 80s Harold Taft showed a video of the wind speed display at the KXAS (DFW Channel 5) studio the day after some severe storms.  They had a weather station outside with dials inside showing the readings, and they would get photographs or videos of extreme readings to show on the air.  During the storm they had a camera pointed at the wind speed display with videotape running, and the next day Harold played the video of the display jumping up to 110 mph.