Derechoes have been in the news in Washington as of late. No, that’s not some new breed of super bureaucrat, but it is something from a supercell sized thunderstorm that crossed several states during its lifetime. You may have seen this NOAA image already on a few news websites:
That’s a time lapse radar image capture as the storm progressed from near Chicago to Chesapeake Bay.
They’ve been known over a century, and around far longer than that. Wikipedia says that Derecho comes from the Spanish word for “straight”.The word was first used in the American Meteorological Journal in 1888 by Gustavus Detlef Hinrichs in a paper describing the phenomenon and based on a significant derecho event that crossed Iowa on 31 July 1877.
They were further refined with the advent of weather radar. Derechos are typically bow or spearhead-shaped on weather radar, and hence they are also called a bow echo or spearhead radar echo. Here’s a WSR-57 radar image from Cleveland, Ohio in 1969:
July 4, 1969 “The Ohio Fireworks Derecho” spanning MI, OH, PA, WV
They are fairly common meteorological events, occurring from May to August, peaking in frequency during the latter part of June into July. According to NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center, the Washington DC area gets a derecho about once every four years:
NOTEWORTHY DERECHOS IN RECENT DECADES
Many significant derechos (i.e., those that have caused severe damage and/or casualties), have occurred over North America during the last few decades. Most of these affected the United States and Canada. Listed below is a selection of some of the more noteworthy events in recent years; the list is not all-inclusive. Information provided in the links includes a map of the area affected, and a description of the storm’s impact.
Holiday weekend events
The human impact of the following events was enhanced by their occurrence on summer holiday weekends, causing many to be caught out-of-doors during the sudden onset of high winds…
July 4, 1969…………….”The Ohio Fireworks Derecho”….MI, OH, PA, WV
July 4, 1977…………….”The Independence Day Derecho of 1977″….ND, MN, WI, MI, OH
July 4-5, 1980…………”The ‘More Trees Down’ Derecho”….NE, IA, MO, IL, WI, IN, MI, OH, PA, WV, VA, MD
Sept. 7, 1998………….”The Syracuse Derecho of Labor Day 1998″….NY, PA, VT, MA, NH
Sept. 7, 1998 …………”The New York City Derecho of Labor Day 1998″….MI, OH, WV, PA, NJ, NY, CT
July 4-5, 1999…………”The Boundary Waters-Canadian Derecho”….ND, MN, ON, QB, NH, VT, ME
The derechos of mid-July 1995
The mid-July 1995 derechos were noteworthy for both their intensity and range…
Series Overview……….Montana to New England
July 12-13, 1995……..”The Right Turn Derecho”….MT, ND, MN, WI, MI, ON, OH, PA, WV
July 14-15, 1995……..”The Ontario-Adirondacks Derecho”….MI, ON, NY, VT, NH, MA, CT, RI
Serial derechos
Two well-documented, classic events over the eastern United States…
April 9, 1991……………”The West Virginia Derecho of 1991″….AR,TN, MS, AL, KY, IN, OH, WV, VA, MD, PA
March 12-13, 1993….”The Storm of the Century Derecho”….FL, Cuba
“Southward bursts”
“Southward burst” is a term coined by Porter et al. in a 1955 paper (see reference here) to describe a progressive-type squall line that surges rapidly southward rather than east…
May 4-5, 1989…………”The Texas Derecho of 1989″….TX, OK, LA
May 27-28, 2001……..”The People Chaser Derecho”….KS, OK, TX
Other noteworthy events
June 7, 1982…………..”The Kansas City Derecho of 1982″….KS, MO, IL
July 19, 1983…………..”The I-94 Derecho”….ND, MN, IA, WI, MI, IL, IN
May 17, 1986………….”The Texas Boaters’ Derecho”…..TX
July 28-29, 1986……..”The Supercell Transition Derecho”….IA, MO, IL
July 7-8, 1991………….”The Southern Great Lakes Derecho of 1991″….SD, IA, MN, WI, MI, IN, OH, ON, NY, PA
May 30-31, 1998……..”The Southern Great Lakes Derecho of 1998″….MN, IA, WI, MI, ON, NY
June 29, 1998………….”The Corn Belt Derecho of 1998″….NE, IA, IL, IN, KY
July 22, 2003……………”The Mid-South Derecho of 2003″….AR, TN, MS, AL, GA, SC
May 8, 2009…………….”The ‘Super Derecho’ of May 2009″….KS, MO, AR, IL, IN, KY, TN, VA, WV, NC
Here, thanks to modern radar technology and people who are interested enough to track storms on radar from start to finish, we have this life cycle of the derecho:
Timelapse of closest NEXRAD base reflectivity of the 29 June 2012 derecho. The timelapse moves from Davenport, Iowa to Richmond, Virginia over 14 hours.
Here’s a cross section, showing how the mesoscale thunderstorm dynamics make that bow echo. Image courtesy of the NOAA Storm Prediction Center page about derechoes:
What is troubling about this being linked to “global warming” is the Washinton Post Capital Weather Gang’s story by Jason Samenow, which ends with this gem:
As the intensity of the heat wave, without reservation, was a key factor in the destructiveness of this derecho event – it raises the question about the possible role of manmade climate warming (from elevated greenhouse concentrations). It’s a complicated, controversial question, but one that scientists will surely grapple with in case studies of this rare, extraordinary event.
Yet Samenow cites the same sources from the Storm Prediction Center page that I do, showing the exact same image above (after editing out the number 3). Yet somehow, he managed to conveniently ignore the historical context and the climatological frequency of derechoes on that page.
He’s gets the coveted WUWT Double BS award for his sloppy journalism.
Joe D’Aleo has more on the derecho event here at ICECAP.
UPDATE: I made an error. I got two different posts mixed up related to the heatwave, conflating the quote discussing the heat wave by Doug Kammerer (with thunderstorm radar loop in background video by Karins on the CP post) . I’ve removed the citation (and video) related to NBC Bill Karins quoted on Climate Progress. My sincere apologies for the error. My only defense is that I don’t listen to audio much anymore due to my hearing issues. Thankfully, I’ve got a big group of people that will let me know immediately that I’ve made an error, and thus I’ve heeded their advice and fixed the error within minutes of this posting. Thank you. – Anthony
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A “WUWT Double BS Award” is not something to be chersihed, one would imagine.
I posted (as TheChuckr) the list of Derechos since 1969 as well as 3 likely Derechos from 1756, 1809, and 1860. Naturally the global warming sycophants and faithful that generally populate the Washington Post ignored my posts.
Wonder if Karins is related to Fox News Channel’s Shepard Smith.
I admire your research and whole heartily agree with you. However…first off, Doug Kammerer is the meteorologist in the video, not Bill Karins (name is in the title of the video). Second, I believe he was referring to the temperatures (heat) , not the Derecho event that had occurred. Not once did he mention the Derecho in his explanation of “global warming.” Nice explanation of a Derecho, though.
REPLY: Yes, this is my fault, I tend not to listen to audio due to my hearing issues. I’ve removed the citation, and thank you for pointing it out. – Anthony
The first embedded video doesn’t show Karins. It is showing DC NBC4 Doug Kammerer and he said it didn’t mean anything other than we are seeing an unusual pattern.
REPLY: Strange, I’ll see what went wrong. [later] Yes, this is my fault, I tend not to listen to audio due to my hearing issues. I’ve removed the citation, and thank you for pointing it out. – Anthony
It’s interesting that most of the listed Derechos occurred in the 1980’s (6) and the 1990’s (8) when (gasp!) C02 levels were lower.
@WUWT
“Here’s Karins on video:”
Re-check your link, on this video I see is Doug Kammerer commenting on the extreme heat, no mention of ‘derecho’
Yes ‘derecho’ is Spanish for ‘straight’ as in ‘straight line’, and is nothing new. Also called a “squall line” in English:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squall_line
😐
REPLY: Yes, this is my fault, I tend not to listen to audio due to my hearing issues. I’ve removed the citation, and thank you for pointing it out. – Anthony
So, according to some meteorologists, if the winter before last weren’t global cooling. we wouldn’t have seen all that snow.
Chuck L: “It’s interesting that most of the listed Derechos occurred in the 1980′s (6) and the 1990′s (8) when (gasp!) C02 levels were lower.”
Since CO2 is lower than 2006 in the USA, I blame lower CO2.
“US emissions have now fallen by 430 Mt (7.7%) since 2006, the largest reduction of all countries or regions. ”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/06/05/usa-co2-emissions-fall-7-7/
They are sometimes regionally referred to as “blow downs” and many people assume the damage is caused by tornadoes because of the tree damage. The evidence of a blow down as opposed to a tornado is the direction of trees that are knocked over. With the former they are generally all in one direction, but in a tornado they are all over the place because of the rotational winds.
As soon as I saw an article referring to a “derecho,” I knew it would only be a matter of hours or days before it was being thrown around as something that either only happens or will happen more often due to climate change.
“maybe we’d see 101, 102 – not 104”
It doesn’t sound like he was blaming the existence of the Derecho on Global Warming – just the higher record temperatures. He is saying 2F-3F higher.
Nobody mentioned “man-made” global warming.
Nobody has disputed that there is global warming. (Natural warming that has been going on since the LIA.)
The actual warming is only about 0.5F and the rest to UHI but there is nothing untrue about what he said.
REPLY: Yes, this is my fault, I tend not to listen to audio due to my hearing issues. I’ve removed the citation, and thank you for pointing it out. – Anthony
On another note, an “all-time record” doesn’t mean for all time because thermometers weren’t around for all time, only since about the 1850s in the mid-west. So maybe this fellow is a jokester and not a real weather man?
The rebound from the LIA should continue to set records. As long as individuals like these are allowed to characterize skeptics as believing that there is no warming taking place neither man made or part of natural cycles, the more they will smugly point to these records as proof of the effects of CO2. And the more points they score with the public. They need to be forced to differentiate the rate of warming of the first part of the 20th century with the last half. But wait there is no difference.
How worried should I be about “elevated greenhouse concentrations”? How many greenhouses and how tall will they be?
I was in the Ohio Fireworks event, at the Fairport Mardi Gras, a beachfront event. Cottonwood trees were torn apart with branches 10 inches in diameter in the air. All the tents were leveled and Lake Erie was blown right up onto the midway. It was wonderful.
I think we are seeing more and more cases where powerful tools like the NEXRAD-88D network in the hands of (computer graphics savvy and adept) veritable ‘children’ are able to reach rashly-derived conclusions without the benefit of hindsight (knowledge of similar past events), insight (not knowing the internal processes of T-storm genesis, meteorological conditions present including upper air/jet position) and an in-depth education (involving physics, thermodynamics/theory of heat transfer including IR radiation et al) in the field of meteorology …
Here is a scholarly article by meteorologists of the time in a 1991 event where the data for a Derecho event had to be assembled ‘by hand’ days and weeks after the fact before all the RADAR imagery was available in one place and this was done by trained meteorologists not a pair of ‘talking heads’ not invested in the ‘science’ underlying meteorology:
“Multiscale Review of the Development and Early Evolution of the 9 April 1991 Derecho”
http://www.spc.noaa.gov/misc/AbtDerechos/papers/Duke_1992.pdf
At that time (1991) the WSR-88D network (1988 was the year the ‘contract’ was approved) had not been fully fielded at all intended RADAR sites; This required the analysts/researchers to hand-recover the notes and pictures (Polaroids – remember those?) taken off the WSR-57 and WSR-74(C and S versions) RADAR PPI (Plan Position Indicator) consoles that were taken at the time these weather events unfolded on each RADAR station’s PPI display console.
.
Wow… Squall Lines with Gale force winds, how totally underwhelming. One might have to put the patio umbrella down and into the garage. Imagine the complex life these alarmists must live where a slightly more energetic Squall Line exists in nature.
Great post. I was going to say merely that it’s worthwhile having a reference post about derechos, but the first one you listed answers a question my siblings I had recently that we weren’t quite able to answer.
On that July 4th, my parents were at my uncle’s summer home in NJ (the replacement house to the one destroyed in The Great Atlantic Storm of 1962″). I had finished my freshman year at CMU, my sister and brother were in high school. My sister had gone to a yacht club with friends, I was going to join them for fireworks later, my brother was at a carnival next to the lake at Fairport Harbor.
At home, it was the most impressive thunderstorm I had ever seen, and probably still is. It was the first time I had ever seen lightning crawl along the bottom of a cloud in mesh-like tracks. I don’t think we had any significant tree damage.
My sister called soon afterwards to say the storm blew water into the harbor and over the docks, and that fireworks were cancelled, and that I might as well pick her up. The only significant issue on the drive there was a large maple tree blown over on US Rt 20, but people could drive around it.
On the way I tried to find some news about the storm on the radio and how things were in Fairport Harbor, and found only one station that had anything to say. The announcer had been at Lakeland park where a tree fell down crushing a girl. She died pretty much in his arms. He later turned on the radio and found no coverage at all, so he went to the station where he worked and commandeered it to spend the rest of the evening as a focal point for reports and to offer assistance for families that needed to get back together. He and the station won a fairly prestigious award for that coverage.
After I got home with my sister, my brother eventually called with accounts of tents being blown down, the midway flooded, and in general a fine time. No anthropogenic fireworks there either. I think his friends parents got him home. Later I went out to see the large trees at the town green that had been blown over and house erased from its foundation from a tornado. I suspect a funnel cloud blew over the carnival and touched down a couple miles later.
I called my parents to tell them that if they heard about the local storms on the news that we were all okay. It was a bit strange to hear them sound quite relaxed about their day, tell them there’s nothing to worry about, and hear them remain sounding quite relaxed about their day. That’s the way it’s supposed to be, but it was the first time they had gone out of state leaving the three of us to fend for ourselves. It was an interesting first test!
I’ve just re-read Donna’s Delinquent Teenager. As a result, my saturated bullshit detector has just been torn from its moorings by this continent-wide blast of rain-cooled air propelled into infamy by the likes of Joe Romm. Maybe we can make a new type of hockey-related graph, shaped like a penalty box. Holy Crap!
“UPDATE: I made an error. I got two different posts mixed up related to the heatwave, conflating the video discussing the heat wave (with thunderstorm radar loop in background) by Doug Kammerer”
Ummm .. that thunderstorm loop looks to be the Derecho event as it moved through the Maryland, Delaware and DC area; Check the date and time on the NWS YouTube RADAR loop against the date/time on the NBC video:
June 29th, Friday – Check
10:55 PM CDT (RADAR) = 11:55 PM EDT (NBC tape) – Check
2012-06-29 (Friday) Storm Reports (1200 UTC – 1159 UTC) – Check
http://www.spc.noaa.gov/climo/reports/120629_rpts.html
Can’t vouch for the on-air personalities though … I took the question “is this unusual” referring to the weather and also the temps experienced.
Would need to see more of the NBC weathercast to be positive that the Derecho event was being discussed, but, my thoughts are they recognized the “bow echo” event (hard to miss even with a low-level of RADAR training), and the recognition that it was a Derecho event comes later on when the extent of the damage is known, as well as the type of damage (straight line and downburst winds vs ‘rotary’ winds) and that is viewed against the archived/recorded RADAR imagery.
My $.02 anyway.
REPLY: Yes it is the derecho event The conflation occurred with the heading over the video at CP:
I don’t know if that juxtaposition of the derecho event by Romm in that context, making it look like the derecho was a result was intentional or not. But Karins never said that in the video. – Anthony
So, let me review a few weather events in my life:
1955? First exposure to a tropical storm. I was on the New Jersey shore on Long Beach Island, I think this was a tropical storm a little ways off shore. I was only 4 or 5 or so, but neat and scary and I remember Dad talking about how hurricanes could blow hanging signs sideways. Several other hurricanes did mess up New England in the years around then.
1962: LBI cut in at least three places, grandparent’s summer home destroyed by a March nor’easter.
1969: I missed it, but by the time I moved to Massachusetts 1974 people were still talking about how incredible the 100 hours snow storm was.
1978: The nor’easter that shut down Massachusetts for a week. People stopped talking about 1969, they still talk about 1978.
I really have very little patience when people talk about about how weather has become more extreme recently. Unlisted are softer events like a major droubt in Ohio in the mid-60s and the cold winter of 1975-76 that disrupted river traffic on the Ohio River and ferry service around Cape Cod. It’s easy to say it’s just a repeat of weather from the last PDO/AMO cycle. The recent derecho is not part part of that cycle, nor is it novel extreme weather.
I lost a maple tree and an American cherry. The maple had good roots and snapped at the base. The cherry lost an 18″ fork from the main trunk. No damage to anything on the ground. These were the strongest straightline winds I’ve seen in a good long while.
I sometimes wonder whether some weather forecasters have ever heard of Edward Lorenz.
From Wikipedia:
“Lorenz built a mathematical model of the way air moves around in the atmosphere. As Lorenz studied weather patterns he began to realize that they did not always change as predicted.
Minute variations in the initial values of variables in his twelve-variable computer weather model (c. 1960) would result in grossly divergent weather patterns.
This sensitive dependence on initial conditions came to be known as the butterfly effect (it also meant that weather predictions from more than about a week out are generally fairly inaccurate).”
Minute changes in the computer model grow into huge errors the further into the future weather predictions are made. Lorenz stated that, “even with perfect models and perfect observations, the chaotic nature of the atmosphere would impose a finite limit of about two weeks to the predictability of the weather.”
A computer used today by the Met Office or the NOAA is millions of times faster than those used in the 1960’s, in line with Moore’s Law. But reasonably accurate weather predictions, let alone climate predictions, using this massive computing power, has progressed from around a couple of days to about seven (with a bit of luck) today.
The huge technological improvements in weather observation instruments such as satellites, radar and sophisticated weather stations have produced a massive increase in weather data without much increase in the number of days weather can be forecasted.
As Lorenz realised in the 1960’s the atmosphere is a chaotic system and despite all our technological progress we are only half way to his estimate of a two week weather forecast.
All respect to Anthony for amending the post so fast. But the point is well made in the post that some forecasters and many journalists presume to be able to identify CAGW, when talking about weather which their computers can only reasonably accurately predict a few days ahead.
We really are forgotten out here in the Midwest. We have those things all the time, and no one bats an eye. We just clean up and go on with life. If people on the coasts think they’re special and blessed with something new, they need to live out here for a bit.