Straight into the record books!

Taiwan records world's 3rd highest wind gust during Typhoon Koinu

As Typhoon Koinu's storm circle enveloped Taitung County's Orchid Island at 9:53 p.m., the Orchid Island weather station measured a gust of 95.2 meters per second or 342.72 kph (212.95 mph), exceeding level 17, the top of the Beaufort scale, CWA reported. The Taitung weather station said the measurement broke Taiwan's 126-year record and the anemometer was damaged.

According to Huang, this measurement was the highest seen in the 126 years since anemometers were first installed in Taiwan in 1897. In addition, such was the force of the winds generated by Koinu "the anemometer then broke down."

One question is, if the meter broke, how do they know the wind didn't go any higher?

That's surprising! Coz it wasn't even that big of a typhoon, supposedly, Cat 2-3?

The thing about typhoons though is they're made up of gusts - or threads of wind. You really get that sensation as they're approaching, it can go from almost calm to a house-rattling gust, then it dies down again until the next gust. As it gets closer, those gusts get stronger, longer & closer together. Even in the eye-wall, there is still that same underlying pattern, though obviously the base-wind is stronger.

So somewhere within Koinu there must have been a rip-snorter gust.

Residents of south Taiwan will be looking for a break, though worryingly, the charts suggest there's another one brewing. Oct typhoons hitting Taiwan are not common, but occasionally there will be a season when they seem to keep coming. Latest i can remember was Nov 1, the year before Nari. It produced a one-in-a-hundred year flood - beaten the very next year by Nari with its one-in-two-hundred-year flood.