408 km/h: The island that saw the world’s strongest wind gust
Tropical Cyclone Olivia produced the strongest wind gust ever reliably recorded over land
April 10 is a landmark in world weather history as the anniversary of the strongest wind gust ever reliably recorded over land.
The record-breaking gust occurred as a powerful tropical cyclone lashed the western shores of Australia during the middle of April 1996.
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100 km/h winds are strong enough to knock down trees and power lines.
119 km/h winds turn a tropical storm into a hurricane.
252 km/h winds see a hurricane become a scale-topping Category 5.
323 km/h winds make for an EF-5 tornado, of which we’ve only recorded 60 since 1950.
408 km/h. That’s how strong the wind blew on Barrow Island, Australia, as Tropical Cyclone Olivia lashed western Australia on April 10, 1996.
The tropical cyclone packed maximum sustained winds of about 220 km/h, making it the equivalent of a Category 4 storm as its eyewall crashed into Barrow Island that historic day.
How did the island’s weather station record such a powerful gust? The weather instruments there sat 64 metres above sea level, with the anemometer sited another 10 metres above the ground.
Meteorologists measure a tropical cyclone’s maximum sustained winds near the surface, where friction plays a considerable role in slowing down those ferocious speeds. Winds often blow much faster just a few dozen metres above the surface.
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology recorded Olivia’s damage.
“The offshore oil industry around Barrow Island suffered millions of dollars [of] damage as Olivia passed. Mardie and other surrounding cattle stations suffered extensive damage to their properties. Pannawonica was also extensively damaged.”
This wind gust was 2 km/h stronger than the most powerful wind speed ever directly observed in a tropical cyclone anywhere in the world.
A dropsonde released into the Atlantic’s Hurricane Melissa in October 2025 measured a wind speed of 406 km/h several hundred metres above the ocean’s surface.