Hurricane wind speed -- measuring

The wind speeds reported for determining the category of hurricanes are recorded by hurricane hunter aircraft at 1000 to 10,000 feet. They often drop instruments to measure the wind at lower elevations, and they have computer programs for estimating the wind speeds, too.

Having gone through several hurricanes, I've found it useful to also look to the buoy database and get sea level or shore level measurements.

Here is a shore based measurement from Panama City FL at 1:54 ET today, as Michael was reported as a CAT 5 hurricane with 155 mph winds (135 knots).
Wind Speed (WSPD): 49.9 kts (~56 mph)
Wind Gust (GST): 66.0 kts (~76 mph)
Here's the URL https://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/station_page.php?station=pcbf1
Here's data on the instruments
Site elevation: 7.9 m above mean sea level
Air temp height: 3.3 m above site elevation
Anemometer height: 8.6 m above site elevation

The purpose of this post is to put the CAT figures in context of surface wind speeds.

While any hurricane is dangerous, it is the water (rainfall & storm surge) that is most dangerous.

Technically - to get live on-site wind speed, you can estimate the angle the weather reporter is leaning into the wind then divide by 10 which will be true wind speed at 2 meters AGL.
ie - he/she is leaning 45 degrees into the wind therefore the wind is 4.5 knots at 6 feet above ground.

Technically speaking.

Funny I was thinking the same thing today, Most measurements are taken well above the ground and the buoys never seem to correlate to what the hurricane hunters are reporting

The Weather Channel today has been really good about putting the ground observations right next to the hurricane hunter reported wind speeds. They have also been reporting several maximum winds at ground stations right before the reporting equipment broke. The highest I heard from a ground station today was 122 mph.

so, heard someone remark - are we talking about the difference between getting hit by a semi vs a train?

Still bad...