Blowin' in the wind

The powerful storm system that moved through town on Sunday night was an example of a derecho event -- basically, it's a storm that has most of the power of a tornado, but in a wide, straight line rather than one spiraling mess. The amount of power in the system that moved through the other day is evident from a time-lapse view of the regional radar summary. The system builds in Nebraska late in the evening, then comes roaring into Iowa overnight, gaining speed as it goes. The storms made it to Ohio by early afternoon -- covering about a thousand miles in 12 hours. While we had some power outages in the Des Moines area, the Quad Cities had it a lot worse and Sioux City has had a real mess to clean up.