Engineering360: "Offshore Wind Turbines May Not Be Able to Withstand Category-5 Winds"

I would have expected this issue (extreme wind speed during lifetime of wind machine) to have been pondered, with some data points having been accumulated during the history of US wind in tornado alley. The most extreme tropical cyclone winds are those associated with embedded micro-burst cyclones, which, for example, may produce Cat 5 winds in a Cat 3 storm, but over a very small portion of the storm's footprint and for a very short duration (minutes).

As stated in the post, nobody really knows the full scoop on wind vectors, especially in the bigger and badder storms. Still, wind machine designers are somewhat blessed with a treasure trove of wind speed/force data from offshore oil rigs and masts.