The Weather People are Using the "D" Word for Tomorrow

"D" as in derecho

Tornado warnings stretched over four states Wednesday night as a massive storm system menaced the biggest cities of the Midwest, pushing tornadoes, extraordinary winds and heavy rain — and perhaps even a derecho, a rare, explosive wind pattern that's like a hurricane on land.

A tornado was spotted about 7 p.m. (8 p.m. ET) near Savanna in Carroll County in northwest Illinois and was heading southeast at 30 mph, the National Weather Service said. It said mobile homes would be heavily damaged or destroyed and warned of flying debris "deadly to people and animals."

A Carroll County sheriff's dispatcher told NBC News there were reports of injuries, but it was too early to have any indication of their number or severity.

Tornado warnings — meaning a tornado had been confirmed or that conditions were such that one was imminent — were in effect for a dozen or more counties in Iowa, Illinois, Ohio and Indiana.

It was the leading edge of a storm system with almost 75 million people in its path at the beginning of what Mike Seidel, a meteorologist for The Weather Channel, said was going to be a "long and ugly night" for Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Indianapolis and the rest of the Midwest.

We are sensitive to derechoes here after last June 29ths big derecho which screamed out of the midwest, all the way out here to coast, causing millions of dollars in damage. Besides, it's a new word to most of us, so we have to use it a lot to make it stick.  For us, it was a brief period of high wind, and some loose debris from the trees; for many up in Washington DC it was days without power.

Derechos aren't really that rare; they are a once every few years sort of event for most of the east coast (whether you recognize them or not), and perhaps yearly in some favored places like Oklahoma. Certainly more common than tornado strikes on a given piece of land.

So between Tropical Storm Andrea, the tornado watch the other night, and a possible derecho, the weather has been livelier than usual.  Stay tuned for reports.  Tomorrow promises to be interesting.

We Survived Tropical Storm Andrea!

As forecast, Tropical Storm Andrea, or more likely the remnants of her, passed to our east some time last evening.  As tropical storms go, it was a non event, we had high winds with the system ahead of Andrea, but not so much as the storm passed.  We had high tides, but nothing extreme. I could easily step from the dock to the boat, and not even use the ladder that I had to instal because the new dock is a foot higher than the original.

Basically, it was a rain event; it rained all day yesterday, sometimes very hard, sometimes lightly.  By this morning, our rain gauge shows about 2.5 inches accumulated, a decent amount, but not overwhelming.  By comparison, with Hurricane Floyd (1999) we got almost a foot of rain in 24 hours.  The lawn is happy. And the cicadas are gone.  They seem to have peaked late last week, and disappeared almost completely.  No drone, no fliers.  Birds have started re-appearing at Georgia's feeder, rubbing their swollen bellies.

That Was Quick!

It was only a few days ago (June 1) that the Atlantic Hurricane Season began, and we already have our first storm.  Yesterday, Tropical Storm Andrea was just a low pressure region in the Gulf of Mexico, and today it is a full blown Tropical Storm, on a path to cross northern Florida and shoot up the Atlantic Coast, reaching our coastal zone sometime tomorrow.  We are on the edge of her "cone of probability", at least so far, but we are expecting a bit of wind and rain tomorrow as it passes.

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As usual, Watts Up With That provides a good selection of automatically updating images. She's not expected to be especially bad as Tropical Storms go, sustained winds to 40 ish and a decent shot of rain.  Our lawn could use it.  But so much for fishing tomorrow.