A NOAA hurricane hunter tracking Hurricane Melissa last month measured the strongest tropical wind gust ever recorded: 252 miles per hour, scientists confirmed Wednesday.
The reading came from a cylinder-shaped instrument dropped by the aircraft from high altitude on Oct. 28 as Melissa approached Jamaica.
The reading came seconds before the parachute-equipped instrument — known as a dropsonde — plunged into the sea, according to the National Science Foundation’s National Center for Atmospheric Research, which verified the reading.
“NOAA looped us in when they saw the high wind speed and asked, ‘Are these numbers any good’?” said Holger Vömel, a senior scientist at the center, which developed dropsonde technology and refined it over several years.
