Pittsburgh records its fastest wind ever at near 32,000 feet

PITTSBURGH — Pittsburgh has recorded its strongest wind EVER at 250 millibars on Monday night, Feb. 18.

Every day, twice a day, weather balloons  launched by National Weather Service offices around the country to gather data at all levels of the atmosphere.

I visited the National Weather Service office in Pittsburgh on Monday and launched the evening weather balloon. As the data came in that night, I observed something very interesting!

The observed winds over Pittsburgh at 250 millibars were extremely strong. In fact, the recorded winds that night were 197 knots, or 226 mph, at exactly 253 millibars, or 32,354 feet.

After looking up the historical data, I found that the previous maximum wind speed ever recorded at this level in Pittsburgh is 187 knots, or 215 mph.

To put this in perspective, the average wind speed at 250 mb in a strong thunderstorm is about 135 knots, or 155 mph, for Pittsburgh. The winter season can bring stronger winds than this but not as high as Monday night. The red-spiked line shows the daily maximum wind speeds at 250 millibars for all soundings at Pittsburgh.

A strong jet streak, or wind maxima, was over Pennsylvania Monday night.

This strong jet stream, which generally flows west to east, allowed some planes to fly fast that night because of a good tailwind. I researched some data via Flight Aware and a 747 plane from Los Angeles to Amsterdam clocked 783 mph just north of Pittsburgh that night. The plane was at a cruising altitude of 35,000 feet. The filed speed was only 574 mph. The plane looks like it reached its maximum speed of 795 mph over eastern Pennsylvania.

Mach 1, or the speed of sound, is approximately 767 mph. You may be wondering if the plane broke the sound barrier. Not quite. The fast speeds the plane was flying at over Pennsylvania was its ground speed and not airspeed. Ground speed is relative to a reference point on the ground. Airspeed is the difference between the ground speed and the wind speed.  On a perfectly still day, these are equal. On Monday night, the airspeed would have been lower than the ground speed.

Cox Media Group