scope facility is rated to survive such winds
with no distress to materials or structure.
Even somewhat stronger winds of order 160
mph would not threaten the structure, as
deformations would remain below the elas-
tic limit. However, at 200 mph, significant
failures would be expected. The recent ad-
ditions to the support building, namely the
many solar panels and base-facility opera-
tion environmental sensors, were designed
to the same wind speed standard as the rest
of the building, and all survived the wind
event intact and remained functional.
This wasn't a particularly unusual storm sys-
tem; it was a “Kona low," a low-pressure sys-
tem which usually settles to the west of the
islands (hence the name) but which this time
was to the north. To put the wind speeds in
perspective, an extreme winter storm on
Mount Washington in New Hampshire, USA,
in 1934, produced a wind gust of 231 mph,
and in 1996 Cyclone Olivia produced a wind
gust of 253 mph, setting a new world record.
Figure 6.
Top panel: The CFHT/
Gemini observed
weather data from
the Maunakea Weather
Center site , at the time
(16:43 HST) of the
highest gust experienced
there — 161 mph
(top row, middle, red).
Bottom panel: This
screenshot from the
Maunakea Weather
Center shows a wind
speed of 96 knots (110
mph) recorded by the
CFHT/Gemini weather
tower on February 10th
at 16:40 HST (bottom
frame).
20
GeminiFocus
April 2019