With the 2018 Hurricane Season in its final 2 month stretch, officially beginning on May 15th and ending in November 30th, people may be wondering how this year’s Hurricane Lane, the first Category 5 hurricane since Hurricane Patricia in 2015, compares to the latter and other tropical weather disturbances around the world in the past.
Hurricanes and Typhoons are similar entities with their only differences coming from where they geographically originate (Hurricanes form in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico while Typhoons originate in the Pacific). They are measured according to wind speed and barometric pressure, determinants of how powerful and destructive they can be, with great speed and low pressure (below 920 milliibars) as ominous signs of their wrath.
Here are 30 of the Most Powerful Tropical Weather Systems Ever Recorded in History, ranked according to wind speed.
#30 Typhoon Elsie (1975)
Duration: October 8-15, 1975
Origin: Pacific Ocean, 400 miles west-southwest of Guam, U.S.A.
Highest 1-minute Sustained Winds: 155 mph (250 kph)
Lowest central atmospheric pressure: 900 millibars
Super Typhoon Elsie, one of the most powerful typhoons to have entered Hong Kong in 1975, was the first occasion that Hurricane Signal No. 10 was raised since 1971. Hurricane force winds exceeding 150 mph blasted the former British territory south of China which sustained relatively minimal damage thanks to advance warnings given by the Royal Observatory.
