Saturday's derecho

OVERKILL

$100 Site Donor 2021
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Ontario, Canada
@DriveHard posted a thread on one he experienced back in 2020:

We've now had one here in Ontario, and holy crap!

We got an emergency broadcast warning about taking shelter at like 11:00AM or something. Everything looked OK, was a bit overcast, so I didn't think much of it. Went off to pick-up some stuff and get some gas.

So, I was at Costco getting gas. My son was inside getting coffee filters and as I click-off $158 on the pump the power goes off on the pump. Weird. Then I hear this roaring wind and I look as this wall of wind and rain is bearing down on us at a breathtaking pace. I quickly hang-up the pump handle (I'm on the back pump) and hop in the Jeep to put the windows up. The guy in front of me is trying to fill his jerry cans and gets hit by the full brunt of it. WHAM!

He's scrambling to get his jerry cans in the back of the CR-V (his wife was driving) and then he gets on top of them and is holding onto the hatch so it doesn't blow off. Our vehicles are getting buffeted heavily and the wind is blowing the rain almost completely sideways. You can't see much more than a couple of feet. It was like a hurricane, but much shorter in duration. It kept up for about 10 minutes and then started to taper-off. He took that opportunity to shut the hatch and get back in the front of the vehicle. We then got another brief surge (not as bad as the first) and then it genuinely started to taper off and quickly dissipated.

I pulled out of the pumps and waited in the parking lot. A propane tank had been caught by the wind and took-out one of the "Tire Centre" spot markers. My son comes out to the vehicle and I tell him about it. He had missed the whole thing.

The damage was devastating. My other son, who was home, calls me, tells me we have no power and should be glad we weren't home as there are some huge branches in the driveway.

We leave Costco. There were at least 8 trees down on the road behind the store, a couple on houses, at least one on a car. Had to drive around downed lines. Getting home was an obstacle course with roads closed by trees and downed wires.

Surprisingly, my ash tree that always loses branches, fared better than my maple, likely due to the direction of the wind. I suspect the maple shielded the ash.

My internet line was almost on the road, so I pulled it up and wrapped it around my light pole to prevent it getting taken out by a truck. The red maple across the street was on the road. Several other trees were down in yards.

I borrowed a generator from my off grid buddy, and ran that for three days (Sunday/Monday/Tuesday). Had no internet service other than cellular. Rogers had good coverage the entire time. Bell and Telus were both hit and miss. My hot water tank (gas) didn't like the generator and wouldn't come on, even after I tried running it through a UPS.

Storm reports confirmed that wind speeds were around a category 1 hurricane. It also spawned a couple of tornadoes, one up near Ottawa.

Power finally came back on today at ~3:45AM.

Some footage from the Weather Network:


And some pics:
My Maple:
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Red maple across the street:
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Bell box about a block from me. That's fibre that's ripped out and wrapped around the tree:
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Coaxial cable:
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I remember the one in 2020. I had just gotten home from work.

I would argue we had one worse last summer, but I don’t think it was as wide spread.
 
Yup derecho is not a fun experience. I was in the Iowa derecho that had 140 mph winds plus. Power outages lasted for weeks and cleanup was still going on a year afterwards.

Good luck with the cleanup. It's never seems to end.
 
My son and his wife live near High Park, Toronto. They had just left their condo to take a walk in the park when they saw "a black wall" coming towards them. They high-tailed it back into their building just as the storm hit. Their area avoided a direct hit by the storm, so was spared the kind of damage your photos showed. They said it was still impressive enough though.
 
We had one hit in 1998. It's something I'm genuinely worried about now, especially living in a mobile home.

I know 100% my fiance would see the dog acting weird and just let her out, then the fence would blow away and she'd just run off or get hit by a tree or something.
 
An interesting trait of a derecho, they are long lived and can hold together impacting 3-5 states during its travel.
 
OPs son has it right. One of those big trees, or even a somewhat smaller tree, falling on top of someone, was the real danger.

Glad to see OVERKILL is still typing on BITOG.

i had never ever heard of a derecho until a couple of years ago. Holy something. Our California earthquakes are overrated. You can tell me all about your Category 4's. I will be glad to "admire" from a distance.
 
I’ve never seen a storm hit so fast. I was out in the yard working when suddenly it got very dark. Turned around and saw a storm front rapidly approaching and before I could even get back to the house branches and sheds and all manner of things were flying down the street. Power here was out for 2 days but my parents near Peterborough still don’t have power.
 
I’ve never seen a storm hit so fast. I was out in the yard working when suddenly it got very dark. Turned around and saw a storm front rapidly approaching and before I could even get back to the house branches and sheds and all manner of things were flying down the street. Power here was out for 2 days but my parents near Peterborough still don’t have power.
Yes, Peterborough and Lakefield both got hit really hard. Lindsay didn't get anything! Omemee didn't look like it got hit hard, but was completely black when I rolled through it to go to Lindsay.
 
Power has been out at out cottage since the storm, Hydro estimates that they will have it back on Saturday. I'm packing my generator to take with me tomorrow... Hopefully we don't have too much property damage. And hopefully the boat and dock are still where I left them 3 weeks ago!
 
I remember one as a kid in Adelaide, we lived near Parrafield airport....tore through the joint, neighbour's trees in our yard, our trees in next yard, water displaced from the above gound pool, and nearly every plane at the airport flipped.
 
Yup derecho is not a fun experience. I was in the Iowa derecho that had 140 mph winds plus. Power outages lasted for weeks and cleanup was still going on a year afterwards.

Good luck with the cleanup. It's never seethat most damage ms to end.
Derecho's are nasty weather phenomena. We had 4 imbedded tornadoes in the Iowa derecho. It wasn't until this year that most of the damage has been repaired, trees removed, etc.

So many trees were destroyed in forested areas it appeared a forest clearing crew had been through them.

Considering the power line damage and snapped off poles, the power companies did a great job in restoring power. We were on home backup generators for 5 days and were lucky, but some folks had to wait three weeks, in the middle of some of the hottest weather of the year.


The WMT AM radio tower, which had stood for about 60 years, was laid down like a Twizzler stick. They finally replaced it last fall.

I had 150 lbs. of shingles in my back yard, none of them from my roof.:oops:
 
Few more pics from my buddy's shooting range (which you've seen pictures of). This is behind the berm:

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I had an approaching T-storm "outflow" snap off a healthy 12" diameter 50 foot+ White Pine - mid trunk
in a vacant lot near me years ago. Also snapped many white birch in the area - mid trunk clean off.
I might have a phone pic of that on my old microsoft windows phone. If I find it, I'll post it here.

Seems these derecho can be like EF3 tornado force winds - only linear nature.

Reminds us we live under and in a fluid - like fishes. Get it moving and there is a great force applied.
 
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