Record-Breaking Melissa Confirmed to Have Strongest Wind Ever for Hurricane at 252 Mph

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A verified 252 mph wind — the highest ever measured in any hurricane — has been confirmed from a dropsonde deployed by a NOAA Hurricane Hunters aircraft into Hurricane Melissa.

This historic gust eclipses the previous all-time record of 248 mph, which was set in 2010 by Typhoon Megi in the Western Pacific. (RELATED: Southern, Central Plains Face Threat For Potential Strong Winds, Flash Flooding As Severe Weather Looms)

The unprecedented wind measurement has been confirmed by the U.S. National Science Foundation’s National Center for Atmospheric Research (USNSF NCAR), the institution that invented the dropsonde decades ago and remains the sole provider of the operational dropsondes used around the world.

Dropsondes are weather instruments that are around the size of Pringle cans, deployed from Hurricane Hunters aircraft directly into the heart of tropical storms. They transmit critical measurements — pressure, winds, temperature and humidity — back to the planes to go on and be used for forecast models.

As a Hurricane Hunters aircraft flew through Melissa while the storm was closing in on Jamaica, the crew deployed a salvo of dropsondes. Moments later, one instrument returned a jaw-dropping reading: a 252 mph wind — officially verified by the USNSF NCAR to be the highest wind speed ever directly measured by a dropsonde in any hurricane in recorded history

The confirmed wind gust is merely the latest in a series of grim records set by Hurricane Melissa, a catastrophic Category 5 that’s tied as the strongest hurricane ever to strike land in Atlantic basin history.

[H/T The Daily Caller]



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