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.

One Million in Region Celebrated July 4 the Way the Founders Did

Without Electricity

More than 1 million homes and businesses in a swath from Indiana to Virginia remained without power on Wednesday, five days after deadly storms tore through the region.

The outage meant no July 4 Independence Day holiday for thousands of utility workers who scrambled to restore lingering power outages.

Although most of the region votes democratic, and therefor supports most efforts to choke off the supply of electricity to the rest of the world, they're remarkably whiny about it when they are forced to live without it themselves...

Taking Pepco to task
(The Washington Post, July 2, 2012; 8:45 PM)

My family and I relocated from Denver to Silver Spring last summer, just in time for the earthquake, tropical storm and now the derecho. Despite these events, we love the Washington area and, in particular, our neighborhood near downtown Silver Spring. What we cannot accept, however, are Pepco’s delays and lack of communication in responding to electric power outages [“Outages could last for days,” front page, July 1]. We’ve lived in areas — Denver, Chicago, Boston, Iowa — with far more severe weather than Washington. Nowhere else have we ever experienced outages of more than a day or two. And we understand these lengthy outages are commonplace here. What is so unique about this area that causes these extraordinary delays in restoring power? I’m not an expert in this subject,

 

After the storm: The good and the bad
(The Washington Post, July 3, 2012; 5:11 PM)

Petula Dvorak’s July 3 column “Zapped by a storm, Washington’s power crowd is on its sweaty knees,” was eloquent, but her unduly fatalistic argument plays into the hands of the corporate do-nothings at Pepco. Ms. Dvorak asks: “How can you drag a historic thunderstorm before a congressional subcommittee?” but the question is misplaced. One could, and should, drag in the executives of Pepco, the utility commissions, local government leaders and indeed federal officials, including Pentagon officials, to answer questions about why so little has been done these past decades to prevent a thunderstorm like this from having such devastating effects.