Extreme Wind Gusts in Extratropical Storms Calculated by Combining Short- and Long-Term Distributions

Knowledge of the maximum gust expected over a period of years is essential for offshore structures design. Because long records of gust speed are not normally available, maximum gusts have traditionally been estimated by multiplying the maximum expected hourly or 10 min wind speed by a gust factor. That calculation ignores the possibility that the highest gust might not occur in the hour with the highest mean wind speed. A similar problem arises in the estimation of the maximum expected individual wave height. By analogy with the accepted method of calculating maximum wave heights, we demonstrate how maximum gusts can be calculated from time series of average wind speed and wind gust distributions. We used measurements from the IJmuiden meteorological mast offshore from The Netherlands to find wind gust distributions. The IJmuiden data is particularly useful for studying gusts because four years of measurements were made at a sampling frequency of 4 Hz. Those distributions were used to predict extreme values of gusts in a storm using methods similar to those used in wave height calculations. The resulting extreme values closely matched extreme values calculated directly from the measured maximum gusts in each storm. The methods described here can calculate extreme gust speeds more accurately than the methods currently in use.