# Powerful Windstorm Batters Central Plains, Narrowly Missing Derecho Classification

About this episode

The episode discusses a significant windstorm that occurred in the central Plains and Midwest, which narrowly missed being classified as a derecho.

According to the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center, no formally classified derechos have been confirmed in the United States over the past week, but a significant derecho-like windstorm swept across parts of the central Plains and Midwest on June 6 and 7, producing a long-lived corridor of damaging winds and power outages from eastern Colorado through Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, and into northern Missouri. The event began as a cluster of thunderstorms developing along a strong cold front draped from eastern Colorado into western Kansas late on June 6. Forecasters at the Storm Prediction Center highlighted a volatile environment: deep moisture with surface dew points in the upper 60s, very strong midlevel winds, and extreme wind shear, all of which favored rapid storm organization into a forward-propagating mesoscale convective system – the kind of structure that can evolve into a derecho when it persists for many hours and hundreds of miles. By late evening, storms congealed into a bowing line segment over northwest Kansas and southwest Nebraska. As the system accelerated east-northeast through the night, embedded rear-inflow jets – bands of stronger midlevel winds…

Topics covered

• severe weather
• windstorm
• derecho
• thunderstorms
• meteorology
• storm prediction

Keywords

• windstorm
• derecho
• storm prediction
• thunderstorms
• meteorology
• damaging winds
• power outages
• midlevel winds
• wind gusts

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: National Weather Service, Storm Prediction Center

Places: United States, eastern Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, northern Missouri

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