The Mount Washington Observatory celebrated an anniversay on Friday. It's been 85 years since observers recorded a 231-mile-per-hour wind speed on the mountaintop.
Eric Kelsey is the Director of Research at the Mount Washington Observatory.
He says first-hand accounts from the researchers give a glimpse of that April day in 1934.
"They knew quite well that when than 231-mile-per-hour-wind was timed and calculated, that it was a world record," he says. "And their collective thought after it happened was 'Will they believe it?' You know, 'Will people trust that this wind actually occurred?'
The anemometer they used to take their measurement was then brought to a wind tunnel in Washington D.C., Kelsey says. There, the chief of the U.S. Weather Bureau, now called the National Weather Service, performed tests that confirmed the device's accuracy.
The Observatory says it remains the highest wind speed ever observed by people.
