Fastest Wind The highest wind speed ever recorded in the world was a 408 kilometres per hour (253 miles per hour) wind gust that hit Barrow Island, Australia during Tropical Cyclone Olivia on April 10, 1996.
The Guinness Book of World Records and National Geographic Atlas have both listed this bay in Antarctica as the windiest place on the planet. Katabatic winds in Commonwealth Bay are recorded at over 150 mph on a regular basis, and the average annual wind speed is 50 mph.
Location of the winds
The strongest winds in a northern hemisphere tropical cyclone is located in the eyewall and the right front quadrant of the tropical cyclone. Severe damage is usually the result when the eyewall of a hurricane, typhoon or cyclone passes over land.
In the lower troposphere, air spiraling inward forms the outer rainbands. In the center is the eye, with nearly clear skies, surrounded by the violent eyewall, with the strongest winds and very heavy rain.
Worst cyclones in Australian history
The deadliest tropical cyclone in Australian history was Cyclone Mahina, another Category 5. It struck Bathurst Bay in Far North Queensland on March 5, 1899 - it killed an estimated 410 people when it scuttled a sheltering pearling fleet.
Cyclone Mahina was the deadliest cyclone in recorded Australian history, and also likely the most intense tropical cyclone ever recorded in the Southern Hemisphere. Mahina struck Bathurst Bay, Cape York Peninsula, Queensland, on 4 March 1899, and its winds and enormous storm surge combined to kill more than 300 people.
The Eye Wall: a hurricane's most devastating region. Located just outside of the eye is the eye wall. This is the location within a hurricane where the most damaging winds and intense rainfall is found.
The highest wind speed ever recorded occurred on Barrow Island, Australia. On April 10th, 1996, an unmanned weather station measured a 253 mph wind gust during Tropical Cyclone Olivia.
Commonwealth Bay is the windiest spot on Planet Earth, with winds regularly exceeding 240 km/h (150 mph).
Windiest City on Earth: Wellington, New Zealand
It's in the perfect position for gale-force westerly currents to rip across the Pacific Ocean and become compressed by the narrow Cook Strait before wreaking havoc ashore.
Winds are strongest in winter and spring in western and southern Australia but the monthly behaviour differs from region to region. Variations in average monthly wind speed of up to 15-20 per cent over the long term annual average are not uncommon.
The strongest side or the right front quadrant tends to have higher winds, higher storm surge, and the highest rainfall. Land-falling hurricanes tend to produce the most tornadoes in the right-front quadrant.
Humans can survive blasts of 500 mph wind, which is important because pilots sometimes need to eject from airplanes at those speeds. In the 1940s, the US government put pilots in wind tunnels to learn how they reacted to high winds.
Using the formula, it only takes a wind of 3 mph to move a maple leaf. A trash can with trash in it weighting 37 pounds could be moved by a 28 mph wind. An average person could be moved by a 67 mph wind, and an average car can be moved by a 90 mph wind.
With an average wind speed of just 1.1 MPH throughout the year, Catalina Foothills in Arizona takes the lead as the least windy city in the United States.
The minimum is not actually in Antarctica as your research suggested, but in the Amazon at longitude 68° west and latitude 0° (that's Brazil near the border with Colombia), with a mean wind speed of 1.55 m/s (5.6 km/h).
In a year, Weatherzone estimates Darwin experiences 54 lightning pulses per square kilometre — making it the most lightning-prone capital city in Australia.
Thunderstorms are most frequent over the northern half of the country, and generally decrease southward, with lowest frequencies in southeast Tasmania. A secondary maximum is also apparent in southeast Queensland and over central and eastern New South Wales, extending into the northeastern Victorian highlands.
Sydney has the highest number of recorded severe storms and the Brisbane the most hail storms – but the data on this is patchy and only goes back about 10 years.