Extreme wind speeds in mixed climates revisited

The methodology for the analysis of extreme wind speeds in mixed climates originally proposed in 1978 by Gomes and Vickery is updated to take advantage of recent improvements in methodology and available data records. The revised methodology is demonstrated for two sites in Australia: Onslow and Brisbane. This work shows that the observed curvature in the upper tail is due to incomplete convergence to the Fisher–Tippett Type 1 asymptote and is not an indicator of Type 3 behaviour as sometimes supposed. It is also shown that moving from a reference epoch of 1 year to an epoch of 50 years frees the method from most of the rate-dependent assumptions, and simplifies the problem to a single, dominant wind mechanism. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]