Most intense tropical cyclone

The most intense tropical cyclone ever recorded is Typhoon Tip, which formed on 4 October 1979 and dissipated on 24 October 1979. Tip reached peak intensity on 12 October, when the air pressure inside the eye dropped to only 870 mbar or 25.69 inHg (typical atmospheric pressure is around 1013 mbar or 29.91 inHg) and winds inside the cyclone rose to a sustained speed of 306 km/h (190 mph). At its largest, Tip was more than 2,220 km (1,380 miles) wide. This means that if its eye was over Paris, the edges of the storm would stretch from Copenhagen in Denmark to Madrid in Spain.

As no government has undertaken reconnaissance flights into a Pacific Ocean cyclone in many years, it is not absolutely certain that Tip still holds the record. Several more recent cyclones have been estimated to have been more powerful, based on satellite imagery. Observations of Typhoon Haiyan (2013), in particular, led many to believe it was stronger than Tip.

inHg stands for "Inches of Mercury", a unit used for barometric pressure in weather reports, refrigeration and aviation in the United States.

Despite its vast size and intensity, Typhoon Tip did surprisingly little damage, spending most of its lifetime out at sea. It caused around 100 fatalities across the western Pacific when it finally made landfall. The worst of the damage took place in Japan where around 11,000 people were made homeless by flooding and landslides caused by heavy rain.

Tropical cyclones are storm systems that form over large bodies of warm water in the tropics before moving towards cooler waters in curving, erratic paths, often growing in intensity as they travel. Cyclones that form in the Atlantic or eastern Pacific are known as hurricanes while ones that form in the western Pacific are known as Typhoons. Those that form in the Indian Ocean and around Australia are just called cyclones.