Hurricane winds:
It had been a breezy day all day yesterday. The winds picked up even more in the evening. The weather station on my radio reported the following (see especially the last sentence):
“Palmer Station weather at 7:27 PM. Wind is from the north at 62 knots, gusting to 72 knots, the temperature is 3 degrees Celsius, 38 degrees Fahrenheit, the wind chill is 21 degrees Fahrenheit. The barometer is rising rapidly and is currently 981 millibars. Don’t go boating – you will die.”
The below photo was taken just outside an office window overlooking Arthur Harbour. Normally, the waves are relatively calm as it is protected by land on two sides, but not yesterday.
The winds picked up around 10 PM and gusted to 86.7 knots (i.e., 99.7 miles/hour!!!) - see lightened area in photo. The straight lines in the photo indicate that the wind speed gauge (i.e., anenometer) malfunctioned, thereby connecting the good data with a straight line. In fact, yesterday we were close to the 1990 record when wind speeds reached 93 knots (107 miles/hour). The wind speeds were classified as hurricane category 1. Definitely not safe to go boating (wind speeds far exceeded the safe boating limit pretty much all day), so everyone remained on station.
