DURHAM, N.H. - Mary Stampone, assistant professor of geography at the University of New Hampshire and the New Hampshire State Climatologist, is available to discuss the fall of the Mt. Washington wind gust record, which scientists recently discovered was broken by a gust of 253 mph in Australia during a typhoon.

Stampone can discuss the climate of Mt. Washington and why it has some of the most extreme weather on the planet.

Scientists recently discovered that the new record was set by a wind gust at Barrow Island, Australia, during Typhoon Olivia in 1996.

Mount Washington's famous wind gust of 231 mph, recorded April 12, 1934, at the Mount Washington Observatory, stands as the record for the fastest surface wind measured in the Northern and Western Hemispheres.

The University of New Hampshire, founded in 1866, is a world-class public research university with the feel of a New England liberal arts college. A land, sea, and space-grant university, UNH is the state's flagship public institution, enrolling more than 12,200 undergraduate and 2,200 graduate students.

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