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We report results that lend support to the hypothesis that extreme hurricane wind speeds are described predominantly by reverse Weibull distributions, which have limited upper tails. The results are based on the analysis of hurricane wind speed data obtained in an earlier project and used for the development of the ASCE 7-83 and ASCE 7-93 Standard wind speed map. According to our results, wind load factors should be larger in hurricane-prone regions than the load factor specified in current standard provisions. However, the requisite increases are smaller than would be the case if the distributions were assumed to have infinite upper tails, as has been done so far in all principal studies of hurricane winds in the United States.

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