Hurricane Melissa broke a world record for the highest wind ever reported in a tropical system.
Why are we just now telling you about this?
The weather data was collected during the storm when the hurricane hunters flew through.
On their flight, they dropped a weather tool called a dropsonde, which measures environmental data in a storm every two to four seconds, including wind speed.
The reading from the weather tool came back at 252 mph, smashing the old record of 248 mph set by Typhoon Megi in 2010!
Scientists were skeptical of the strong gust and waited weeks after the storm to verify the wind gust reading. The verification process used software that applied physical and meteorological concepts to hurricanes to ensure the wind report was accurate.
These technologies better help meteorologists and researchers forecast and relay life-saving information to those in the path of a storm.