This morning's Worcester (MA) newspaper reports that Wednesday's storm there was, indeed, a derecho. Good call, Whitelief!
Pat T
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Aug 4, 2006
Rare ‘derecho’ topples trees, tower
Fast-moving ‘family of downburst clusters’
By Bill Fortier TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF
[email protected]
Damage to many sections of Worcester County on Wednesday afternoon was caused by a rare weather event that last occurred in the area more than 10 years ago.
Glenn A. Field, warning coordination meteorologist in the Taunton office of the National Weather Service, said meteorologists from that office consulted with their colleagues in the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., yesterday morning to discuss damage reports and radar images of the storm.
After reviewing the information, they determined that a derecho occurred during the round of thunderstorms Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Field said.
A derecho is a widespread “family of downburst clusters” that is part of a very fast-moving, long-lived windstorm, he said. The word “derecho” is of Spanish origin and means straight ahead.
The storm showed the classic radar signature of a derecho, which is a bow-echo that looks like a bow for shooting arrows. By comparison, a downburst is a downward burst of air from the cloud to the ground, Mr. Field explained.
Derechos travel a long distance in a short amount of time, Mr. Field said.
Wednesday’s storm began in the foothills of the Berkshires shortly before 4 p.m., picked up power as it entered Worcester County, and moved off the southeastern New England coast about 7 p.m.
For a storm to be considered a derecho, it has to travel at least 100 miles, Mr. Field said.
A derecho also causes pockets of varying amounts of damage in different areas along its path, Mr. Field said. For example, winds estimated at 120 mph blew over the transmitter of radio station WESO-AM on Maynard Road in Dudley near the Southbridge line. It also downed an estimated 40 trees as well as large tree limbs in Charlton, where 300 National Grid customers were still without power at midafternoon yesterday, and it caused wind damage in Holden.
Mr. Field said the National Weather Service plans to release a detailed statement on Wednesday’s storm today.
He said Wednesday’s storm was the second derecho he has seen in this area since he started working in the Taunton office in 1993.
“I used to see more of them when I worked in Wisconsin,” Mr. Field said.
The last derecho to hit the area was on July 15, 1995, when winds of 93 mph were recorded in Otis, and an estimated 1 million trees were blown down in the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York. That storm, which moved from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to Cape Cod in about eight hours, roared through the Worcester area about 6:30 in the morning with intense lightning and high winds.
Yesterday, WESO Chief Operating Officer Richard H. Vaughan spent the day working to get his 1,000-watt station back on the air after Wednesday’s storm blew down the station’s 52-year-old transmitter.
“I’ve had better days,” he said just after noon in his office on Foster Street, Southbridge. He explained that the strong wind dislodged one of the three guy wires holding up the tower, causing the 240-foot structure weighing about 10,000 pounds to tumble down. Mr. Field said he was told the clamps on the tower that held the guy wire were built to withstand winds up to 140 mph.
“We’re thinking winds of about 100 miles per hour, but we certainly aren’t ruling out higher winds than that,” he said.
Walter Drag, the senior forecaster in the National Weather Service’s office in Taunton, said Wednesday night that radar showed 70 mph winds in different sections of the storm.
Kurt Jackson, president and engineering consultant for Hampden Communications Corp. of Paxton, said the plan to get WESO back on the air called for hanging a 180-foot wire, which used to be part of WBZ radio’s antenna structure, to a tree to get the station back on the air by the end of the day. WESO was broadcasting late yesterday afternoon.
Mr. Vaughan said the station will try next week to erect a temporary tower about 100 feet high. He said he would talk to Dudley officials to see if the permit process to put up a permanent tower can be waived because it would be the same height as the one blown over.
Charlton was especially hard-hit by the storm. As of midafternoon yesterday, Carpenter Hill Road near Route 20, as well as Center Depot, Flint, Burlingame and J. Davis roads, were closed to traffic as crews worked to clear trees and put up wires knocked down by the storm.
While workers from Hawkeye Electric of Patchogue, N.Y., worked to put up new electrical transformers and a crew from Verizon waited for them to finish so they could string new telephone wires, Arnold Burlingame, owner of Arnie’s Auto Body Inc., 23 Center Depot Road, tried to do business in his sweltering office.
“It’s hard for an auto body shop to do work without electricity,” he said, adding that four of his workers were out of the office on towing jobs.
“I’m just sitting here in the office doing some paperwork and taking calls on my cell phone.”
Work crews by late in the morning had removed an approximately 18-inch-wide ash tree that came down across Carpenter Hill Road during the storm, but the road remained closed while Daniel D. Wyman and Timothy Dugan of JCR Construction Co., of Raymond, N.H., worked to put up wires that came down with the tree.
Meanwhile, Ronald Welch, of 5 Carpenter Hill Road, began sawing his ash tree for firewood.
“The storm was fast. It lasted at most five minutes,” said Mr. Welch. He said the ash tree turned out to be filled with carpenter ants, and he heard a loud bang when it crashed down on Carpenter Road.
“It was no big deal,” he said. “It’s just nature’s way of pruning the trees, that’s all.”
Mr. Wyman, working yesterday to put up wires, said he was aware of the prediction that severe storms could hit later in the day.
“Then we’ll stay,” he said with a shrug and a smile.
