Buoy stations are off shore.
Thirty to forty mile an hour winds are nothing. We commonly get winds much higher than that, out here in WA. Sustained winds of 20 mile an hour are typical in the summer. Winter storms often have gusts up to 60 miles per hour.
The news people showed a man on the shore of North Carolina, wearing a ball cap to keep the drizzle out of his eyes. The cap was not blowing off his head.
Actually, I mis-stated that, buoys are in the water, land stations are what is termed, off-shore, meaning off the shore line.
I did mention “wind stations” (found at local weather stations and airports) as well, not just buoys. At the height of the weather here, we got40- 50 MPH sustained for 5-6 hours with frequent gusts in the 60’s and one at the Richmond airport that read 71 mph. Central Va generally has winds about 5 to 15 when things are calm but the types of trees and land are different here. East of I95 corridor the wind was stronger, hurricaine force for a number of hours. Locals in the Hampton Roads area saw a damage, storm surge and flooding that they feel rivals Isabel in 2003.
A weather person pointed out that when the storm reaches NYC, ground level winds might only be 60-70 MPH but at 30 stories up the winds will be 80 MPH and much higher still at 50 stories on up.
I don’t know what station you saw but I saw one brave reporter in Va Beach, Va who could hardly keep his ground getrting blown around and drenched with rain. Richmond got 6 inches of rain, and areas east got 12 to 15.