Three questions: Is there a direct relationship between barometric pressure and wind speed? Which 20th century American hurricane had the highest recorded winds? How would a high-rise office building fare against 200 mph winds?
Background: Many websites dub the 1935 Labor Day Hurricane as having the highest winds of any 20th century U.S. hurricane, but Camille’s seem even faster. Suffice it to say, measuring Category 5-speed winds is problematic.
As last measured from a Navy weather plane, Camille (1969) had sustained winds of 201.5 mph, with stronger gusts. Its barometric pressure was 909 millibars, perhaps a bit lower. Tides ran over 24 feet. Altogether, Camille killed 256 persons.
The (unnamed) 1935 Labor Day Hurricane is said to have registered sustained winds of 150 mph, with higher gusts. It registered a record low atmospheric pressure of 26.35" or 892 millibars.
I also found this passage about the 1935 Hurricane: “At Alligator Reef, wind shattered the thick glass on the beacon at a lighthouse (carrying the lens ten miles) and titanic swells rushed ashore.”
Hurricane Camille, August 17-19, 1969: Camille was born off the African coast on August 5th but didn’t become a hurricane until the 15th.
Once into the Gulf of Mexico, the small, powerful hurricane intensified rapidly. By late afternoon on the 16th an Air Force reconnaissance plane measured a 905 mb pressure (26.72 inches) and winds of 160 mph, indicating a Category 5 hurricane, the most powerful on the Saffir/Simpson Scale.
Early on the 17th when Camille was centered 250 miles south of Mobile, AL, the Air Force team found a central pressure of 901 mb (26.61 inches) and maximum winds of more than 200 mph near the center. That pressure reading was second only to the Labor Day hurricane of 1935 in which a 26.35 inch (892 mb) pressure was recorded in the Florida Keys. Camille and the 1935 Keys storm are the only category 5 hurricanes to hit the U.S. this century. The lowest pressure ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere occurred during Hurricane Gilbert in 1988–888 mb (26.23 inches). The final death count for the U.S. is listed at 256. This includes the Gulf Coast and the Virginias–143 on the Gulf coast and another 113 from the Virginia floods. The damage in 1990 dollars is estimated at $5.2 billion. Camille was the 5th most costly storm in U.S. history, following Andrew, Hugo, Betsy, and Agnes.
with the '35 'cane lots of people in the keys had meters, most bottomed out at 2600. they set the reading on meters that they could verify. a few people had said they had lower readings but lost the meters in the storm so they couldn’t verify the readings.
one man showed the meter to 3 witness in the car they were sheltering in then he threw the meter into the storm. he said he didn’t want to see it go any lower. his reading even with the witnesses was not recorded officially
As with all high intensity storms (categories four and five), the worst damage is thought to have occurred, not from straight line winds but from vortexes or embedded tornadoes. There were thousands of these vortexes in Andrew; many of them could be traced for several miles, as they usually destroyed every building in their paths.
In 2002, as part of an ongoing review of historical hurricane records, National Hurricane Center experts concluded that Andrew had sustained winds of 165 mi/h at landfall, bringing it to category five on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale.