Hurricane Ida's 172 MPH Wind Gust In Louisiana Among Nation's Strongest Measured

 Jonathan Erdman

Published: August 30, 2021

Hurricane Ida pummeled southeast Louisiana with destructive wind gusts, including one gust along the coast among the nation's strongest for any hurricane.

Ida roared ashore in Louisiana at Category 4 strength Sunday with maximum sustained winds of 150 mph – a high-end Category 4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale.

As Ida's center moved ashore, some rather startling winds were measured.

A peak wind gust of 172 mph was clocked by instruments on a ship in Port Fourchon, about 60 miles south-southwest of New Orleans, as the eyewall of Ida hammered the Louisiana coast.

Infrared satellite image of Hurricane Ida at landfall in southeast Louisiana on Aug. 29, 2021 (left) and the photo of the wind instrument display showing the 172 maximum gust measured on a ship in Port Fourchon, Louisiana.

While the observation may not have been taken at the standard elevation of 10 meters (about 33 feet) above the ground, it was deemed to be believable, as it came from one of NOAA's Port Meteorological Officers, a meteorologist that helps train volunteers on ships to take accurate weather observations.

And it wasn't the only high-end wind gust measured in southeast Louisiana.

There were at least a half-dozen other locations that clocked gusts over 100 mph in Ida.

The Strongest U.S. Hurricane Wind Gust

As we wrote in a previous article, stronger hurricanes than Ida have struck the U.S. before.

Category 5 Hurricane Andrew in 1992 produced a peak wind gust at a private residence of 177 mph.

Another Category 5 hurricane, Camille in 1969, was estimated to have maximum sustained winds of 175 mph at landfall on the Mississippi coast. However, no weather instrument survived that lashing to take an actual measurement. According to the final report from the National Hurricane Center, an offshore oil rig was raked by gusts of 170 mph.

The most intense U.S. hurricane at landfall by pressure, the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935, was estimated to have maximum sustained winds of 185 mph at landfall in the Florida Keys. Again, however, no instruments sampled that tempest.

The strongest measured wind gust from a hurricane on U.S. soil is from the September 1938 Long Island Express, a 186 mph gust at the Blue Hill Observatory in Milton, Massachusetts. The incredible forward speed of that New England hurricane (60 to 70 mph), in addition to the elevation of Blue Hill (635 feet above sea level), likely contributed to the extreme wind gust.

Island Park, R.I. is heavily damaged by the Long Island Express of 1938.

More recent examples include a 153 mph gust clocked by storm chasers in Holly Beach, Louisiana, during Hurricane Laura in 2020; a 139 mph gust clocked at Tyndall Air Force Base near Panama City, Florida, with Category 5 Hurricane Michael in 2018; and a 137 mph gust at Sandy Point National Wildlife Refuge in St. Croix during Hurricane Maria in 2017.

America's strongest surface wind gust of any kind, tropical or non-tropical, was a 231 mph gust atop New Hampshire's Mount Washington on April 12, 1934.

According to the WMO's World Weather and Climate Extremes Archive, Earth's strongest measured surface wind was a 253 mph gust in Tropical Cyclone Olivia on Barrow Island, just off the coast of western Australia on April 10, 1996.

The Weather Company’s primary journalistic mission is to report on breaking weather news, the environment and the importance of science to our lives. This story does not necessarily represent the position of our parent company, IBM.

The Weather Company’s primary journalistic mission is to report on breaking weather news, the environment and the importance of science to our lives. This story does not necessarily represent the position of our parent company, IBM.