Pics of the storm

[r1crusher]

Looks like Father Nature is trying his hand at knocking up Chillicothe right now....

[ZachG91]

Looks like Father Nature is trying his hand at knocking up Chillicothe right now....

Looks like a crotch rocket

[ReconRat]

Good shot of a similar storm in 2008 before it got to Chicago:

http://www.spc.noaa.gov/misc/AbtDerechos/images/HampshireIL2008July10.jpg

From the NOAA website article about derechos:

http://www.spc.noaa.gov/misc/AbtDerechos/derechofacts.htm

[Gump]

Yeah, well it was going in the jet stream path for a reason, but Meso events are really about unstable air masses. All the very hot air down low, wanted to be up high.

When the storm started, it was small. But it started an exchange flow of hot air down low for cool air up high. A cascade type event occurred, that influenced even more of the hot air down low to head upward. Which in turn brought more cold air down. Since the lateral movement across the ground was high, it spread out instead of being a single massive storms (I think, not sure.) Causing again more hot and cold air exchanging. All developing into a frontal system of rotating storms, pushing a pressure and temperature front across the ground in front of it.

Basically becoming a ripple in the atmosphere. A shock wave. There's even a very ultra low sound from stuff like this. You'll see birds and animals fleeing before it gets here. I didn't hear it coming...

edit: I looked up some stuff on Meso storms, and they mostly don't describe it this way, but I do. The majority of the cold air coming down is in a single vortex in the middle of the storm. If the front is curved, the leading edge of the curve (the center) is where the major downdraft is located. It's big, really big. It's basically a tornado in reverse. That's why I call it a jet stream slapping the ground. Picture it as something like cleaning your driveway with a stream from a hose. Air or water, doesn't matter.

Great explanation. Makes a lot of sense. We had a 3 minute wind come thru the other day. It was as if the wind was a concentrated freight train and just passed thru.