Peak gust
Definition
- Related pages
- 4
- Last revised
- 23 August 2026
A peak gust is the highest wind speed recorded over a short interval, a few seconds long, within some longer period: the hour, the storm, the day. An automated station samples the wind continuously and keeps the highest short-interval value it saw, with the time it occurred; a spotter reports a gust read from a home instrument or estimated from what the wind did. It is the figure that matters for damage, because a roof fails in the strongest few seconds rather than under the average, and it is the figure the Weather Service measures a severe wind criterion against.
A gust is a point measurement in time and in space. It is the wind at the anemometer for those seconds, and thunderstorm winds vary so much across a few hundred yards that a station some miles from a property may have missed the gust that reached it, or caught one that did not. A gust estimated from damage by an observer is a different kind of figure again, and the record marks the difference where the source reported it. A gust printed for a grid cell by an hourly analysis is not one anyone recorded; it describes the broad wind field and misses the brief local winds of a storm.
The product prints a gust as a whole number in miles per hour, says whether a figure was a gust or a sustained wind wherever both are possible, and keeps a measured gust apart from one read from an analysis by the mark and the word beside it.
In the report
How the document prints it
In the report a measured gust appears in the record table under wind, as a whole number in miles per hour with its date, its distance and bearing from the address and its source, marked as measured; the findings take the peak wind from measured records only, so a value from the analysis grid never sets the headline. The wind section prints the hourly analysis wind over the address itself in two columns, sustained and gust, each qualified as analyzed and introduced by a note that an hourly analysis does not resolve the brief gusts a thunderstorm produces, so a lower figure there does not contradict a stronger measured report nearby.
From the record
23 Aug 2026
The most recent measured wind to reach the severe criterion
- Strongest measured gust
- 75 mph
- Severe wind criterion
- 58 mph
- Wind reports on the day
- 135
- Independent sources
- 2
On 23 August 2026 a measured gust of 75 mph was the strongest on record for the day, against a severe criterion of 58 mph, among 135 wind reports carried by 2 independent sources. It is the wind at one instrument for a few seconds, not the wind at every roof in reach of it.
Measured Detected, not measured
The page these figures come fromRelated
The terms this page uses and the guides that go further. Each is shown against its own example from the record.
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Term
Sustained wind
The wind speed averaged over a fixed interval of a couple of minutes at a station, as distinct from the peak gust within it.
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Term
ASOS
The network of automated weather stations, mostly at airports, that records the official surface observations of wind, temperature and precipitation.
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Term
Severe thunderstorm warning
An official National Weather Service warning that a storm meeting the severe criteria for hail or wind is occurring or imminent inside a drawn area.
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Guide
Automated weather reports in court: what survives a challenge
Two Florida courts excluded wind figures taken from commercial weather products because nobody could verify how they were made. This guide states what those rulings turned on, what Rule 702 asks of a figure and of the person citing it, what independent corroboration means as a count, and what a report has to say about itself to be cited.
Sources
The primary references. Each opens on the agency's own site.
The glossary defines the word. The report is what uses it.
Everything above is definition: what the word means in the document, and what it does not. None of it says what reached one roof.
Run the address and the archive is searched at the property: the storm, the date, the measured size, the distance and bearing from the roof, and the federal record each figure came from, in a document that states its own method. About a minute.
How this page is made
- The text
- Written by the editors and last revised 23 August 2026. It explains the record and how the report reads it; it contains no figure of its own.
- The example
- Drawn from the archive when the page was compiled, 24 August 2026, and rebuilt daily as the record deepens. Every figure in the panel marked From the record is computed, not written, and links to the page it came from.
- Measured and detected
- A report from a person or an instrument is measured. A radar-derived size is detected, not measured, and is marked as such, here and in every document we issue. The two are never added together.
- What this is not
- A definition of a word the report uses. It is not a report on any property, and it states no opinion about one. The coverage page states what the record holds, by kind and by year.
About this record
Everything here is reproduced from public federal and volunteer weather records, as the agencies and observer networks that publish them released it. Titan Weather compiles the record; it does not observe the weather, and it is not affiliated with any source it cites.
No archive holds everything. Storms cross places where nobody is standing, instruments and spotters cover some areas better than others, sources revise their records, and recent reports can take weeks to arrive and settle. Where this page shows nothing, nothing was found in the sources searched, within the period and area it states. That is not a finding that no weather occurred.
These pages describe the public record near a place or on a date. They do not establish what reached any particular property, and nothing here is insurance, legal or engineering advice.