hlcater

confine wizard021 and ldub to this thread while you're at it too pls. thx

Here's a compilation of all the highest gusts I observed in sequential order. Including one that I believe may have been as high as 120. I had initially pegged it at 100ish, but after seeing damage surveys, other videos in the area and of winds that strong(Irma's eyewall), local measurements(primarily atkins 126), it seems as if marking that gust as 120 isn't necessarily implausible. Essentially, all the gusts were best guess measurements using a similar method to that used on the strongest gust, so I hope that they're fairly accurate and they seemed sound to me. But who knows...

That 126mph wind gust from Atkins is the new Iowa wind speed record if verified.

graphic is too far north imo. Also leaves out a slew of 100mph wind reports along hwy 30.

best vid I've seen so far....

Y’all forget 2017 hadn’t really gotten started by this point and had a similar progression of mostly junk until late august.

I hope we can get a nice fall severe weather event. Been awhile since we had one of those. The derecho wasn’t enough for me . I still need to get one Actually Good™ tornado on the year and it’ll be complete. The two bird farts I got 5/23 didn’t do it for me.

I suspect there may have been gusts that exceeded 120mph in spots. We'll never know though because DVN isnt surveying for some reason...

Not really, primarily because the onset was slow and I was busy trying to find the best/safest spot to ride out the storm

There's a 109mph report from 3 N Atkins on the LSR page. That's about 5 miles from where I was. I was 2-3S of Atkins.

Oh yea, the same thing happened here. I probably had 70mph gusts and perhaps 1 or 2 to near 80 well after the video above was taken, though they were difficult to quantify on video due to the lack of precip. What I really like about that video is that you can hear the "impact" of the really high winds against the car as the deep whoosh as the big clouds of mist blow by. Being in that singlehandedly motivated me to order a Kestrel 3000 for next time so I dont have to guess whether the winds are pretty strong or really strong. Confident in 100mph primarily due to damage and proximity to Nick Stewart, who measured 100mph.

I had time to drive around quite a bit yesterday and traced what was essentially a big X across much of Linn County. From this, two areas of especially intense damage were found. The first being up near Robins/Hiawatha/Midway/Marion, and the second being along US 30 into the SW side of CR and Fairfax. This forest blowdown was near Midway and about half of all trees were snapped, and the ones left had suffered heavy foliage/limb damage. This was not far from the 112mph report, though part of me wonders if the winds that caused damage like that weren't higher? Impressive damage from Marion. Particularly the apartment building that lost roofing. This high tension power line was downed about 2 miles west of Palo. 4 of these were toppled in a row. Another one of those DIs that suggest winds of at least 100mph. The next two pictures are from the US 30 corridor near Atkins. These are from the SW side. The damage here was the most intense I was able to find. Especially the damage to the MAC and surrounding apartments (shown). We were without power for 3 days, having it restored at about 11pm last night. We were one of the first areas to have their power returned yesterday. As of now, many areas of CR(roughly 60%) still have no power and some areas are still blocked due to tree falls and downed lines even 4 days later. This is the worst derecho I have ever experienced and I'm not sure if the scale of destruction from it can be accurately described, especially on the corn crop (as stated already) and will have a lasting impact on Cedar Rapids, both on the surviving trees and in memory. It was like an intense RFD, but lasting 3 times as long and 5 times as wide. Here are two additional albums of pictures. https://imgur.com/a/dvhGA87 https://imgur.com/a/sqSl6Cm

Okay, I've got power and some time to upload/give an account so let's do it. Like I said the morning of, I had been suspicious of derecho potential monday but seeing how my call sunday didnt pan out due to poor convective evolution in the morning, I wasn't gonna bust twice, so I just put a sock in it. Once I saw the storms forming in NE though, I knew it was game on, as that seemed to be the biggest differentiator. If storms didn't initiate/organize in NE, they probably weren't going to at all. With that out of the way, I worked at 3pm so I couldn't afford to go meet the derecho out in the middle of the countryside, so I met it 3-4 miles west of Fairfax. The storm caught me before I was ready and I was expecting the strongest winds right along the gust front but interestingly, my location was such that the strongest winds took awhile to arrive and I distinctly remember thinking "wow, this sucks. 120mph aloft and I'm only gusting to maybe 60mph". Perhaps its best the strongest winds waited, as it gave me time to scout out a nice spot in a corn field where I'd be safe from powerlines/trees. Not shortly after, the core of wind which I estimate consisted of gusts to ~100mph arrived. From that point on, I was just along for the ride. Strongest winds persisted roughly 5-10 minutes, but wind gusts of severe criteria lasted 45 at least. This dash video is the strongest 5-10 minutes of wind. With winds from about 1:30 to 5 minutes being especially intense. Nick Stewart's video is very similar to mine. A farm about half a mile downstream from me suffered heavy tree damage and a grain silo of theirs was tossed/rolled probably 100yds into a field. I made my way towards Fairfax, which had suffered heavy damage, with many trees and powerlines down and one building completely destroyed and its contents strewn downstream. Getting from Fairfax to downtown took an eternity. Most roads were a standstill, and on the stretch of 380 from hwy 30 to H avenue, I counted 8 overturned semis. It took me well over an hour to drive about 10 miles. I worked for the rest of the day(hospital ER) and we were so overwhelmed with the amount of thankfully minor injuries(trees, glass, ceiling collapses, overturned semis, that sort of thing) that we were treating people in the hallways and had to open up overflow areas. The fact the entire city was without power exacerbated the issue. This last pic was from Hiawatha from a family member. I worked the next day as well, so don't have much there. That's the initial experience and pics from the first day, but I'm not done yet .

There were probably tornadoes in the DVN CWA, but when the background winds were similar to what you’d find in a QLCS tor, I have to imagine that’s hard to find.

Clocked in Cedar Rapids. Rode it out in a corn field north of walford where I experienced 100mph wind gusts as the MCV intensified to the north. This is the same axis of damaging wind that came thru Cedar Rapids moving NE. I’ll leave a few pics for now. Worst storm I’ve ever experienced. Still without power and cell signal(1 bar LTE currently). I’ll post more when I can. For now here’s a few. https://imgur.com/a/Ezml1sS

Saw something like this coming last night with the steep lapse rates, big CAPE and 50kt jet nosing in. (Tho I saw something like this coming Sunday too and it never did, due to OFBs and poor destabilization). Well this one’s here, it’s not dying any time soon and I’m ready.

MCS generation parameters are pretty good tomorrow. 5000 CAPE gradient along a warm front oriented favorably towards NW-SE shear vectors, probably 30-35kts of EBWD and a relatively decent LLJ, at least for this time of year and during the day. CAMs disagree wildly on what exactly transpires, but might get a decent storm around here at least.

This summer has been insufferably boring.

TD10 about to waste the best name on the entire 2020 list for a 40mph TS. Sad!

I have been split twice today by thunderstorms.

2020 failing to even produce garden variety thunderstorms and opting for cold stratiform rain. Classic!

look what 2020 has reduced people to this "event" lol

models keying in on the potential for a seasonably robust shortwave to rotate through the area saturday into sunday. As to be expected with a feature like this, models are highly variable from run to run but seems like an opportunity for some severe weather for someone. Biggest concern overall for me right now is the extent of destabilization that occurs given that cloud cover/junky convection look assured given lack of an EML. GFS overall has been the most "impressive" member of guidance which has had a stronger surface low and therefore a more organized low level response and backing of winds. Not a super impressive setup by any means even on the GFS, but when it's 2020, you grasp at straws.