Derecho - never knew what it was, and now I've lived through it

[DriveHard]

I've lived in Iowa most all my life, and was even an amateur storm chaser in my younger years. NEVER have I EVER experienced anything like what we had on Monday. Just now getting power and internet back. It looks like a war-zone in most small towns here in central Iowa. I've seen reports of 120+ mph winds, and it last for over 20 minutes. I have a 30+ meter tree I have chained together with a 10-ton chain to keep it from falling on my house. Just crazy!

https://www.foxnews.com/us/derecho-...r-south-dakota-ohio-damaging-wind-gust-damage


A derecho (/dəˈreɪtʃoʊ/, from Spanish: derecho [deˈɾetʃo], "straight") is a widespread, long-lived, straight-line wind storm that is associated with a fast-moving group of severe thunderstorms known as a mesoscale convective system.[1]

Derechos can cause hurricane-force winds, tornadoes, heavy rains, and flash floods. In many cases, convection-induced winds take on a bow echo (backward "C") form of squall line, often forming beneath an area of diverging upper tropospheric winds, and in a region of both rich low-level moisture and warm-air advection. Derechos move rapidly in the direction of movement of their associated storms, similar to an outflow boundary (gust front), except that the wind remains sustained for a greater period of time (often increasing in strength after onset), and may exceed hurricane-force. A derecho-producing convective system may remain active for many hours and, occasionally, over multiple days.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derecho

 

[buster]

Yeah we had one in June that knocked our power out for 4 days. High straight-line winds.

This was ours:
https://www.weather.gov/phi/EventReview20200603

https://www.weather.gov/images/phi/Archives/20200603/20200603derecho.gif

 

[DriveHard]

some pics, including one of a tree I planted as a kid :-(

 

[buster]

I assume in Iowa you get tornados too?

 

[doitmyself]

Thank you for sharing. I'm wishing everyone in the affected areas the best in recovering from the devastation. Stay safe, especially if you wield a chainsaw to attempt clean up.

 

[DriveHard]

I assume in Iowa you get tornados too?

Yes, we do...but normally they are more confined (smaller damage path)

 

[supton]

Wowzer! Never heard of that weather term. Good luck cleaning up.

 

[SevenBizzos]

Heard of one back in '11 that knocked power out for 4-5 days. This time it was only 18 hours and I had access to a generator (that was purchased because of the last time). They recorded seven tornados locally. I was driving while it passed and it was pretty intense. It's pretty amazing the intensity, the speed, and the length these things go.

 

[THORROMIG]

Glad you and your Family are safe -- that is the important thing. Mother Nature is NO JOKE!!!

 

[PimTac]

The weather service keeps adding names to regular storms to make them sound more menacing and destructive. In my area we’ve had rain storms since the beginning but now they call them atmospheric rivers.

 

[earlyre]

Heard of one back in '11 that knocked power out for 4-5 days. This time it was only 18 hours and I had access to a generator (that was purchased because of the last time). They recorded seven tornados locally. I was driving while it passed and it was pretty intense. It's pretty amazing the intensity, the speed, and the length these things go.

I was on My lunch break when that one came through here... driving back to work from whatever fast food, the car was literally hit by a wall of WIND, and RAIN (caps to signify the intensity) make it back to the employee parking lot, "oh, I'll just wait for it to calm down before heading back in" we only get 30 min for lunch, and as it was approaching 20 min of me sitting there in the car(well over my time), I surmised it wasn't going to slow down anytime soon, and headed back into the store, resigned to getting soaking wet.

get back into the store, to find the whole front end EMPTY. they had evacuated EVERYONE to the designated storm shelters. that storm knocked out the transmitter for the local weatherband radio station.. as in flattened the tower...

Dad and his twin brother had been fishing on a local river, had already started driving home when the wind hit, the wind picked my uncle's boat up off the trailer, and flipped it upside down onto the road. so the 2 65yr old Heart patients (one of whom had already technically died from a heart attack) had to flip the boat over, and get it back on to the trailer and tied down better, in the middle of the howling wind and Torrential rain.
to their credit though...they did it...

 

[EdwardC]

Same here! I'd never heard the term before this past week. My street didn't have much damage at all, just a lot of smaller branches thrown all over, but our friends, just half a mile away, had massive 42" trees that were uprooted and down.

 

[MNgopher]

The weather service keeps adding names to regular storms to make them sound more menacing and destructive. In my area we’ve had rain storms since the beginning but now they call them atmospheric rivers.

To be clear, the weather service does not name storms other than hurricanes. You can blame the Weather Channel (who is NOT the weather service) for this phenomenon. NOAA and the NWS have specific policies on this practice.

The term derecho is not a name, it refers to a specific storm type, and it has been in use for a long time. My introduction to the term was in 1999 - with a storm that started over in the Fargo North Dakota area, running east across Minnesota into the Boundary Waters where it blew down an estimated 25 million trees. The storm continued east across Ontario, Quebec, Vermont and New Hampshire. Multiple days of chainsawing just to get back out to the main road for our cabin area in Northern Minnesota...

And to the OP, be safe during the cleanup and good luck!

 

[DriveHard]

you can see the damage from space...

 

[gfh77665]

The weather service keeps adding names to regular storms to make them sound more menacing and destructive. In my area we’ve had rain storms since the beginning but now they call them atmospheric rivers.

You are right! Anytime there is the slightest little storm in the Atlantic or Caribbean, they SCRAMBLE the "hurricane hunters" air craft for a 1000 mile flight, then tell us "it might develop" and we will have to "watch over the next 7-10 days". Idiots. Every little storm gets a name... POLAR VORTEX!!! BOMB CYCLONE!!! The more menacing the better.

If they are not inducing panic into the public, they feel like they are failing.

 

[MNgopher]

OK, I'll take another tact. Was this a regular old thunder storm? It traveled over 800 miles, with gusts over 60 mph through portions of the country that do not build to hurricane standards. Flattened 1/3rd of Iowa's crops.

The term derecho is a defined term, and the storm met it. It isn't something that was just dreamed up recently to grab headlines.

 

[Aichiguy]

This 60 yr old Iowan had never heard of this type of storm. I was in downtown Omaha when it went through. The shelf cloud was very defined and dark. It only lasted about 10 minutes in Omaha. Back in central Iowa all 4 of my kids lost power in their Des Moines area homes. On Wednesday evening one is still without power. It was a 45+ minutes event. One of our company trucks blew over on I-35 N of DM. The driver needed stitches in his arm and got some bruises but avoided serious injuries. As I traveled E on I-80 today there were 2 semis on their sides in the median. An hour NE of DM had measured winds of 106 mph. I work for a grocery chain that lost millions of $$ of perishables. Pretty intense.

 

[E365]

The weather service keeps adding names to regular storms to make them sound more menacing and destructive. In my area we’ve had rain storms since the beginning but now they call them atmospheric rivers.

The term “derecho” for this type of storm was first used in 1888.

https://www.spc.noaa.gov/misc/AbtDerechos/earlyderechopaper.htm

 

[E365]

You are right! Anytime there is the slightest little storm in the Atlantic or Caribbean, they SCRAMBLE the "hurricane hunters" air craft for a 1000 mile flight, then tell us "it might develop" and we will have to "watch over the next 7-10 days". Idiots. Every little storm gets a name... POLAR VORTEX!!! BOMB CYCLONE!!! The more menacing the better.

If they are not inducing panic into the public, they feel like they are failing.

The phrase “Polar Vortex” was first used in 1853
https://www.noaa.gov/multimedia/inf...polar-vortex-you-might-want-to-put-on-sweater

Weather “bombs” was a term first used in the 1940s. And commonly used since the early 1980s.
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/weather/tg/wnoreast/wbombs.htm

 

[RazorsEdge]

Yes, we just went through this Monday. Just got everything cleared up, cleaned up etc. Helped neighbors with the cleanup process and it's been a long three days. Still no electricity but as of tonight, internet has been up, though slow.

I learned a lot from this. I'll be purchasing a generator in the future and a chainsaw of my own.