The windiest place on Earth blows near gale force on an average day
At Cape Denison in Antarctica's Commonwealth Bay, explorer Douglas Mawson's 1912 expedition recorded average wind speeds of around 80 km/h across an entire year, the highest sustained winds ever measured at sea level. Dense, freezing air pours downhill off the polar ice cap and funnels through the bay as a katabatic wind. Mawson's men often couldn't stand upright outside their hut for months at a time.
— Douglas Mawson, The Home of the Blizzard — Memoir of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition, 1911-1914 (published 1915)
Go deeper: get the book →