A peaks‐over‐threshold analysis of extreme wind speeds

The analysis which follows provides both point and interval estimates of 10-, 20-, 50-, and 100-year return values for wind speeds at the five locations. Wind speed is the primary quantity of interest, and it was decided to ignore wind direction and surface pressure, the other two potentially useful variables. Furthermore, the frequency of measurement is unnecessary for the problem at hand, and it was felt that little loss in information would result from replacing hourly wind-speed observations by daily maxima. Thus, the starting point for this analysis is the sequence of consecutive daily maxima of the hourly wind-speed observations over the given period of record, for each station.