A derecho 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. Derechos cause hurricane-force winds, heavy rains, and flash floods. In many cases, convection-induced winds take on a bow echo 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.
We were hit hard last night — our windows were rattling and banging with hail and savage rain smashing into our house, our basement was flooded, and the cat was stricken with mortal terror and freaking out in the house. We lost power briefly, and I notice some of the milkweed Mary is cultivating was smashed. No serious damage was done, fortunately.
Except…it’s predicted that we’ll probably get another one tonight.
I don’t know if that’s a stock photo to convey the meaning of derecho, but that is one mean looking shelf cloud.
Hope the basement dries out quickly.
I saw the headline, thought “What’s a derecho?” – and the first line of the post told me!
Stay safe, PZ.
Let’s hope it’s no worse tonight than last night. The best of luck to you, PZ.
I didn’t notice, but we must have had some wind last night. The neighbor has two strange trashcans in her yard.
I experienced a derecho back on July 26th,1980, living in SE Michigan. 100-150 mph winds throughout the region and a LOT of damage. Many old trees ripped out of the ground. Lots of damage to buildings, cars, etc. Surprisingly/fortunately only 1 person was injured and no deaths.
My dad was a private pilot at the time and rushed over to the local airport as soon as he could to check on his plane. It was fine, but others weren’t so fortunate. One that was tied to 4 foot long concrete pilons ripped one of them completely out of the ground, bending the fuselage. Another plane ended up lying upside down on a nearby building. Apparently, that one was salvageable.
I remember riding with a friend of mine the previous evening and seeing this crazy display of lighting way off in the distance. It was cool to see. Little did we know what was coming the next morning. Living in a river valley, tornadoes tended to miss us so this was quite ‘exciting’. Oh, and we didn’t have a basement.
Minnesota has derecho SEASONS? I saw ONE in Northern VA quite a few years ago: our power went out, and there was lots of wind, rain and continuous lightning for several hours. It was already dark when it came, so I didn’t get to see what the clouds looked like.
Minnesota has thunderstorm season, and last nights was a real banger. Derecho is literally ‘in a straight line’ in Spanish. It’s not uncommon for several t-storms to spawn along a front, but things get dangerous when those storms all join up and spawn downbursts and tornadoes. (Spanish for turning windstorms)
It’s been very hot here and we have had quite a bit of rainfall this month, so there is plenty of moisture and heat energy to fuel intense thunderstorms.
At least the rain is also falling on the Canada wildfires around Winnipeg and Northern Manitoba. Air quality has vastly improved from three days ago.
@6 Raging Bee, I recall that derecho too. It has its own wiki page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_2012_North_American_derecho and occurred in the same storm season as Hurricane Sandy.
I remember this one too. I was in Baltimore hanging with friends and that thing came through like a jet and rattled the windows.
I remember several years back, on the Night of 1000 Lightning Strikes that set CA ablaze, I was sitting in my living room when without warning the sky lit up and thunder followed a second later. And it kept happening so fiercely I had to go outside and see it unfiltered through windows. A few moments after I did there was a strike a couple streets over from me and simultaneous thunder.
And then it began to rain. I have never experienced rain like that. I could hear the raindrops hitting, but nothing seemed to be getting wet. I finally dared to stick my hand out from under the eaves above me, and nothing. And then “splat.” Like a seagull had dropped one on me. When the next lightning flash lit the world up, I could see the rain – huge, individual ml-sized drops with wide spacing between. It was like a hailstorm, except all the large hailstones had melted.
And then it was over, as quickly as it had begun, maybe ten minutes at most. It wasn’t even like it moved on with more lightning farther away. It just stopped, done. The Weather Channel’s radar hadn’t even registered it, at least not on their website. Weirdest weather shit I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen some weird weather shit. :)
I saw a time-lapse satellite video recently of a storm line across the mid-west region with storms bubbling up. Impressive. The other big weather story is the “Heat Bubble” over the Southeast. 110 in Jacksonville, FL where I’m from originally is very unusual. I should call up my brother and give him a hard time because I’m fairly sure he’s a Trump voter. Then the other day I saw this Carl Sagan talk about spending on the Cold War since 1945 and 1990 ($10 Trillion) versus spending on mitigating global warming (Here).
New weather term to me. Stay safe, everyone.
Re: Climate changes
One thing I think a lot of people are going to learn the hard way (or likely not at all) is the raw power of nature. Lot of kooks out there think weather can be controlled on a whim, as if we’re capable of generating and directing that much energy all at once. We’re not seeing someone flip a switch like a comic book weather-themed villain, we’re seeing the collective result of all of humanity’s industrial history coming to back to bite us. Humanity messed up its living space, and world leaders don’t want to do the chore of clean up.
“Why do you care so much about the environment?”
“I live here.”
The BBC has a short video about your weather here: https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/cy984gpw953o They say there are 40K people without power from it.
@2 KG : “I saw the headline, thought “What’s a derecho?” – and the first line of the post told me!”
I remember hearing about them via Peter Sinclair’s* Climate Denial Crock of the Week** series back in (or after) 2012 notably at the 55 seconds mark onwards in this 9 minute long yt video – Welcome to the Rest of Our Lives now oevra decde old – aaannnnd now I feel durn old. Sigh.
.* See : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Sinclair_(environmental_activist)
.** See the now renamed This is NOT Cool blog here : https://thinc.blog/
@ ^ The temperature records mentioned in that CDCotW clip there are now outdated of course. Might not even be in the top ten anymore quite likely and due to Global Overheating which predicted-ly keeps setting ever newer ever higher records – no co-incidence and that’s the point.
So much evidence.
Climate Graphs screaming at us.
Yet.. we still take sweet fuck all action esp in contrast to what’s needed. Plus now we have Trump and the Regressive “Drill baby drill” Deniers in charge.
Locally, the drought in SA has been – kinda – in some areas – broken by a couple of weeks of good heavy rainfall. Playford lake in Belair NP which has been at the lowest levels I’ve ever seen – (lived here for decades) – is now full again and looking like its old self. Creeks are flowing and things are green.
Deceptively so :
Source : https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/green-paddocks-mask-reality-of-communities-still-very-much-in-drought/ar-AA1JlLIx
Plus, this is nearly August – well into Winter here. It should’ve already been like it is for weeks if not months and how short will this spell of proper Winter last now?
I’m in northern Illinois near the Chicago area. Lately the weather has been reminding me of a year I lived near Tampa Bay, Florida. Sudden lightning storms, hard rain for some minutes, then it just fades very quickly. I don’t know that I’ve seen a derecho but it still makes an impression when the rain comes down that hard and then vanishes a few minutes later. I’ve already been driving for a couple of those episodes.
In Florida we often get strong squall lines, especially as the lower end of fronts that spawn strong tornadoes in more susceptible areas. I think a derecho is a different beast than that.
‘derechos’ means ‘rights’, not just ‘straight’, in Spanish.
Didn’t know that term had been coopted, much like ‘mesa’.
(So, I thought this post was about rights rather than about weather, until I clicked it)
I kind of miss Midwestern thunderstorms. We get a lot of rain in the PNW, but a good thunderstorm is pretty rare out West here. I’m sure I’d miss them less if my car was getting dimpled by hail or the trees in my yard were having branches stripped off.