Exact and general FT1 penultimate distributions of extreme wind speeds drawn from tail-equivalent Weibull parents

We present a contribution to the current debate on methodologies for assessing extreme wind speeds. We review long-established extreme theory in the light of recent developments and show that it is unnecessary, indeed inappropriate, to resort to asymptotic models. We develop Cramer's method for the general penultimate distribution of extremes for the case of Weibull parents into a new model for extreme wind speeds that avoids the issues of asymptotic convergence and the associated errors. We demonstrate that the 30-year record of hourly mean wind speed at Boscombe Down, UK, has right-tail equivalence to the Weibull distribution and use this record to demonstrate the new model. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.