Abstract
This paper reviews the characteristics of wind speeds in tropical cyclones revealed by data from modern automatic weather stations, dropwindsondes, and Doppler radar in the United States. In general winds in tropical cyclones are found to possess the same relationships between surface and gradient speeds as extra-tropical cyclones and the same level of gustiness. Relationships between wind speeds and insurance losses are developed and used to refine the Beaufort Scale. It is shown that statements issued by the National Hurricane Center (NHC), the US government agency responsible for issuing warnings and statements of current and past conditions in tropical cyclones, do not reflect the surface data now available. It is also shown that the design wind speeds in tropical-cyclone-prone areas of the United States, which are based on computer simulations, appear to be unreasonably high in the light of wind speed characteristics presented in this paper and speeds measured in past storms. The findings reported are discussed in the context of information presented in 1963 by Shellard and Davenport in the first major wind engineering conference.
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