Wind at Akademik Vernadsky station reaches the highest speed since 1947. Video

A new weather record has been set at the Akademik Vernadsky Ukrainian Antarctic station. The wind speed there reached 42.5 m/s or 153 km/h.

According to the polar explorers, this is the highest figure in the history of observations since 1947. To confirm their words, the Ukrainian researchers posted a video of it, which resembles high-speed train, on their Facebook page.

"According to the Beaufort scale, a speed of 153 km/h is classified as the highest 12-point figure and is defined as a hurricane. To put it more simply, the wind near the station accelerated like a high-speed train," the Ukrainian polar explorers wrote on their social media page.

The strong winds at the polar station broke out in the middle of the night. It was at this time that Vitalii Kaminskyi, a system mechanic of the 29th Ukrainian Antarctic Expedition (UAE), was on duty. He immediately woke up his colleagues and called for help to tie up all the boats. This moment is shown in the video.

The polar explorers emphasize that the Vernadsky was not damaged.

"It is important to note that strong winds blow in our area all the time. It is these winds, rather than severe frosts, that are most annoying, especially when there is also precipitation," the Ukrainian researchers say.

The previous maximum wind speed of 40.1 m/s was recorded at Vernadsky Research Station twice - in 1991 and 2015. Back then, these gusts were observed in August, and now the bad weather has hit in September.

According to Denys Pishniak, head of the Department of Atmospheric Physics and Geospace at the National Academy of Sciences, wind records have been set quite often at Vernadsky over the past decade, especially during the transitional seasons.

"In 2017, the record for July was set at 39 m/s, and in 2016, the record for September was set at 36 m/s, which has now been broken. This is in line with the climate change trend: cyclone trajectories are shifting closer to the station, and their intensity is likely to increase," the scientist explained.

Interestingly, a weather vane with a measuring board used to be used to measure wind speed at the Vernadsky Research Station. Soon it was replaced by an automatic rotating anemometer, which provided much more accurate measurements for decades.

And in recent years, wind measurements have been duplicated by two automatic systems operating on barometric and acoustic conversion principles, with no moving parts in the converters. On September 22, both systems showed almost the same new record speed, according to Ukrainian polar explorers.

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