STORM wind RP100 (present)
How hard the wind blows in a once-in-a-century tropical cyclone under today's climate — the band the loss engine integrates.
Source: STORM v4 (Bloemendaal et al., VU Amsterdam / IVM), IBTrACS-based Year: ~2000 (1980–2017 climatology) Category: Physical risks · Direct Physical Loss engine inputs Coverage: Global Format: Raster grid (~11.5 km) Used in risk analysis: Yes — gates Mitigating services (Storm mitigation) at ≥ 35.5 m/s
What it shows
How hard the wind blows at a location during a once-in-a-century tropical cyclone, in metres per second. "Once in a century" is the return period — the average interval between two storms at least that strong — so the map compares places at equal rarity rather than at the worst storm each of them happens to have recorded. All six tropical-cyclone basins are covered.
How it is built
STORM v4 fits a statistical model to IBTrACS, the historical record of observed cyclone tracks, and simulates 10,000 years of storms from it; the wind speed reached at each return period is then read off that synthetic record. Darwin imports the whole set, from the 10-year to the 1,000-year storm. This page documents the 100-year band, the one the app reports. Speeds are 10-minute sustained winds.
How to read it
Higher values mean stronger winds at the same rarity. 33 m/s is where the Saffir-Simpson scale starts category 1, 42 m/s category 3.
Class thresholds
A site is flagged on Mitigating services when its 100-year wind reaches 35.5 m/s — a strong category-1 cyclone, inside the layer's own "High" band (32–42 m/s), so the class reading is unchanged.
How this threshold was calibrated
It replaces a ≥ 32 m/s rule read on the 50-year band. The figure could not simply carry over, because 100-year winds exceed 50-year ones everywhere, so the same number would have made the flag more permissive. 35.5 m/s is the value that flags the same share of cyclone-exposed pixels as the old rule did. It is a Darwin calibration, not a published standard.
The measurement behind it, for audit: over 2.11 million cyclone-exposed pixels, the median ratio between the two bands is 1.111, and the 100-year median is 35.24 m/s where the 50-year median sits at 32.
Why this layer
It is the raster the Direct Physical Loss engine integrates to price cyclone damage, so the screening flag and the priced loss now explain a site with the same picture. It replaces Tropical Cyclone Wind Hazard, which stays available as a display layer.