What is the strongest wind you have flown in?

[PositiveRate]

"A lot of you have seen 40+kt crosswind. Whether it's direct or not, that's still a lot."


It's actually more common than you'd think, especially if you've done any east coast stuff in the winter or west coast stuff in monsoon season, etc. Fun stuff.

 

[TurboS7]

LGW @ 500 feet 210/78 on ground 210 @65 Gusting to 72. Weather 5 overcast with vis 5KM in rain. No doupt the worse with 737-800.

 

[ToiletDuck]

holy smokes.

 

[bssthound]

In Hurricane Mitch we had gusts well over 200 kts. The windspeed reported for a hurricane is a maximum steady wind. There are usually stronger gusts.

 

[wmuflyguy]

50kts head on at 500 feet in GRR this past winter....had a Ground speed on the ILS of about 40kts. My student had an awesome time with the ILS!! Like a 100-200fpm descent. Had to apologize to ATC for that one

 

[Gobi Gred]

Landing in OMA with gusts to 52 kts pretty much on the nose give or take a few degrees in a C-402. The boxes didn't complain a bit. 30 knot steady direct crosswind in Billings MT is the highest I've done in the CRJ. I absolutely hate that airplane in a x-wind!

 

[Flyeys]

205 knots off the nose at 370 going to IAH from STL. made for a long flight

 

[johnny taliban]

75 knot headwind as a co-pilot in a lear

50 knot x-wind as captain. The hardest part was trying to taxi after we landed. It was VERY difficult to make any turns without LARGE AMOUNTS of differential thrust.

 

[eagleatr]

Had 65G85 one night in MCW.


Mid 30's during cruise one winter, 215 kts.

 

[TrafficInSight]

35 kts 30 degrees off the runway heading so far.

 

[DJS]

In a C-172, 4000', IAS of 130, ATC says, "The last radar pass shows you at 30kts". Heard them talking to another plane (no idea the type) showing 10kts in the wrong direction (i.e. backwards!)!

A big front was moving into the Seattle area. My CFII and I thought we could beat it to PDX and back for a training flight; we were wrong. We ran into it around KLS. Not super bumpy, just fairly consistent chop (my instructor jokingly said it was going to just rock him to sleep and to let him know if anything went wrong ). The ride home was fun. The GPS said we hit 197 kts in an old beatup trainer C-172! Woohoo!

 

[Flechas]

One time in EVB (New Smyrna, FL) I took off with a student and we flew backwards at 45 kts at 4000 ft in a C172SP (GPS groundspeed), the coast line was going away from our nose pretty fast, that was a weird feeling.
Then we went in the pattern and I turned base abeam the numbers and ended up in long final, that was awesome, came to a full stop pretty much in the treshold!!

 

[91100 100 set]

45 gusting to 55 in Buffalo last fall. Right down runway 23 fortunately. If I remember correctly a FedEx went missed and diverted to Rochester, and we were considering the same, but never got the windshear warning they apparently got and made it work. It wasn't pretty, and we were plenty busy, but we lucked out and the touchdown wasn't all that bad.

 

[Flywithmike]

15 Gust 45kts 25-30 degrees off the runway in a 402 landing Henderson, NV. McCarran had 737's going around. Low fuel had to land, wasn't fun.

 

[FlyWithSean]

Worst wind I ever landed in was just the other day, not the strongest but definitley challenging in the Twin Otter. 70 degrees off the runway 23 gusting to 36. A battle the whole way.