Highest Wind Velocity.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 17 July 1914, Page 2

Highest Wind Velocity.

The greatest wind velocities are undoubtedly those occurring in tornadoes. The recent destructive storms of this class in America raise the question : How high was the wind ? but this question cannot be answered satisfactorily. In the annual report of the chief signal officer for 1875, there are some attempts to estimate the velocity of the wind in a tornado of that year from it* more remarkable effects, e.g., a p'ne board driven three inches into Jie trunk of a tre*e, and so on. A velocity of wind sufficient to produce such results could not have been much less than that of a cannon-balJ, or somewhere between 600 and 800 miles an hour. It is doubtful whether we shall ever have instruments for measuring such winds, but on the other hand something might be done toward providing stronger instruments than those now in use, so that in winds of ordinary hurricane velocity the anemometer would not be carried aw»ay just when about to make its most interesting record. The need of such an instrument is pointed out by Maxwell Hall, Gov-

eminent meteorologist of Jamaica, in an account of the hurricanes of last November in that island. A Robinson anemometer' exposed to the hurricane of November 18 broke

away when registering 120 miles an hour. Probably the highest velocity ever recorded by an anemometer was 186 miles an hour, on Mt. Washington, January 11, 1878; but this and all other high records of anemometers (i.e., of the Robinson type) are well known to be greatly in excess of the true velocities. The members of the Mawson expedition now in Antarctica report that they experienced winds with a velocity of 200 miles an hour. These would not be of the tornado type, but a steady blow. These reports are, however, not regarded as official records.