It’s not unusual for one house to be nearly destroyed while adjacent houses have relatively minor damage after storms that produced these derechos. If you’ve ever heard the term “straight line winds” that refers to the weather phenomenon known as a derecho.
Meteorologists look for widespread, long-lived windstorms associated with a band of rapidly moving showers or thunderstorms on any given severe weather day or a day of enhanced instability. The tern “Derecho” was coined by Dr. Gustavus Hinrichs in 1888. The word "derechos" is a Spanish word which means "direct" or "straight ahead". That’s why it’s commonly referred to as straight line wind damage.
The majority of derechos occur during the warm season which is May, June, July and August. Since our planet just measured its third straight record warm year in 2016, we need to monitor every storm during the year for these radar signatures.
According to the Storm Prediction Center, derechos can cause more fatalities than EF-0 and EF-1 tornadoes combined. The SPC says that this is in spite of the fact that EF-0 and EF-1 tornadoes comprise over 80% of all recorded tornadoes.
