Derecho anyone?

It hit here!! Thankfully we faired just fine, but not without a little excitement though. We live on the top floor (7th) of our building and have a little deck on the roof. Earlier in the day we had brought in the stuff we thought we had to worry about and secured the rest. When the winds hit, my daughter and I decided to go up to the entertainment room upstairs to watch the storm through the sliding glass door (maybe not the brightest thing to do, but we love to watch storms). When it hit, it was crazy! Our grill flew across our deck and into the opposite railing which opened our gate. The grill was headed for the gate and Clara's skylight in her room was right below the gate. She ran out to shut the gate and grab the grill... so I went after her. We were both out there in the worst of the wind, trying to pull the grill back and secure it with weights. Clara got hit in the leg with some flying debris, so she panicked and ran inside. They are rebuilding all of our decks right now, and the workers left all of their stuff out. Huge sheets of plywood were flying past. It didn't last long and after it was over, we went out with some other neighbors to clean up the best we could. There was stuff everywhere, buckets of screws overturned, a grill that had been picked up and dropped on one neighbor's plants in pots, crushing them all. It was mostly just a mess, with little actual damage, and no power loss. Some people in the neighborhood are still without power and one building closer to the lake had their whole roof peeled off, taking the skylights with it!! So many trees down in the neighborhood too. The main streets are fine, but it's nearly impossible to take the side streets to get anywhere because of all of the limbs.

There's not a whole lot to see in these photos, but you can see the chunks of plywood in the one and the deck chairs that were thrown around the roof in the other....

 

So scary!! Glad you are all ok!!! We've had 3 here...1991, 2000, and most recently in 2012, although I don't remember it being called a derecho until the one in 2012. It was so crazy and did some serious damage! Many were without power for weeks during a severe heat wave. I can remember stores being out of water and generators, and long gas lines because of people filling the generators.
We had this huge oak split in half and fell directly between our house and the neighbor...


I hope that you get your power back really soon!! Thoughts and prayers for those dealing with damage!!

 

@IntenseMagic Would that have been in June of 2012? Like you I had never heard the term until then and we had one on June 29, 2012. Yep, it is documented with a layout. We had sustained winds in excess of 80mph with gusts topping the 90mph mark. I was at work when it came through and had fun trying to get home because of downed trees and power lines. It also came through right at the time the office leaves for the day... 4:00 p.m. In those days I carried a camera in my purse so took photos of the rain falling horizontally. Got a few photos on my way home as well then walked the neighborhood that night and took photos. I had no damage at my house, just some limbs on the lawn and I lost a couple of pipes from a wind chime. I live in an neighborhood that has a wooded area (my house is about 50 yards from "the woods"). One house had a large tree come down on the deck of the house and it caused damage to almost every room in the house. The family had only lived there a few months. At first it thought there would be too much damage to the foundation to safely fix it. But that wasn't the case. Took almost a year before they got to move back in.

Luckily power was not out all over town and I was one that never lost power. It was quite noisy in the neighborhood that night with all the chain saws being used to get the trees off the roads. The main road into my subdivision had a tree down but it didn't completely block it. A road farther back in the woods had trees blocking them completely. All cleared by the people living here before dark.

 

Yes! It was June 29, 2012. It was certainly wild. We have a wooded area right behind our house and after seeing all the damage, I felt totally blessed that we didn't have a tree down on us!

 

Me too! The neighbors to my west have some very large trees in their backyard (which is actually next to the side of my house since they are on a corner) and one of them at that time was not very healthy and looked like it would come down at any time... right on my house. It held up during this storm (although their swingset/playset didn't). The house that had the tree come down on it is right across the road from this neighbor's house. Several years ago they took the tree down and I went and thanked them for doing it! They said no problem. Most of our storms come from the west so I could still have trees come down on my house since they have other trees in that yard. The biggest would hit my bedroom if it fell towards my house.

 

That nasty storm hit us too on Monday, but I think when it crossed Lake Michigan from Chicago it took the tiniest bit of wind out of it's sails. I think we only had about 60-70 mph gusts here. It definitely did it's share of damage and people are just now starting to get power back. Somehow we did not lose power this time.

I TOTALLY remember the one on June 29, 2012 because I had taken the entire week off of work to have a lovely staycation with my kids and then we had no power that WHOLE week and it was HOT. Lol! We rode our bikes to the ice cream shops a lot that weeks.

@IntenseMagic oh my gosh! The size of that tree is so scary! I can't believe it felt where it did and didn't hit anything inbetween! That's nuts!

 

There's a wikipedia page about the 2012 derecho.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_2012_North_American_derecho

Interesting reading, maps and photos from all states involved.

And there's a page for this one as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_2020_Midwest_derecho

 

I'm so sorry that y'all are going through this. What a mess. We were affected when one came through Virginia years ago. My prayers are with everyone!