We learned a new weather term this summer: “derecho.” That’s what the meteorologists called the severe thunderstorm system that swept through the Washington DC area on the night of June 29th. According to Wikipedia: “Derecho comes from the Spanish word for ‘straight’ . . . in contrast with a tornado, which is a ‘twisted’ wind.” Derechos are fast moving, straight line thunderstorms; they also can be very destructive. The derecho that swept through Washington overturned trees, knocked out power lines and led to several deaths. Many folks in the region were without power for several days, and in some cases, for over a week. To make matters worse, the region was experiencing an extreme heat wave, with temperatures approaching 100 degrees over multiple days. We were fortunate: we suffered no real property damage and lost power for only 24 hours (although even that was fairly miserable). To stay cool, we camped out in the basement (which was about 10 degrees cooler than the rest of the house) and filled up a wading pool in the backyard. By some minor miracle, the local Starbucks retained power, so we were well caffeinated during the blackout. You don’t realize how much you depend on modern conveniences—air conditioning, light, refrigeration, the internet(!)— until you have to live without them for a few hours.
Below is a composite radar image of the summer derecho. The system covered 600 miles in 10 hours, moving at an average speed of 60 mph:
1 comment:
I can relate to the pains of not having power. In June 2010 we lost power for 4 days. Personally for me, just loosing electricty isn't that terrible. However, my daughter was 5 weeks old. My mother in law was visiting from Japan. We got a lot of rain and my sump was overflowing at 3am the first night. And worst of all I'm on well water. With no power there is no well pump to pump up the water, so no power means no water. Loosing water for 4 days is harder than loosing electricity. We were bucketing water from the sump well to flush the toilets. No showers. No washing dishes...
After that we purchased a natural gas back-up generator that powers a few essential circuits in the house if the power goes out. Since then it's only been needed for about an hour. But it's good for peace of mind.
Anyway...derecho...interesting I've never heard that term before. Something new. Thanks!
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