[Part 2 of 2] As this small segment of the 2020 Great Western Derecho struck, a wall of verifiably severe wind roared up the Badlands from the lower Plains below, further accelerating the intense blast up the bluffs. This was the last shot before I ran the hundred feet or so back to my vehicle, threw my gear onto car-camping bedding and pillows in the back, and pointed the front into the wind. It rocked hard, shaking up and down with tremendous gusts, and certainly would have rolled if pointed sideways to the upslope-channeled, open-exposure current. I had been in the eyewalls of two hurricanes, and without the skill to offer a specific estimated speed, can say confidently the winds were similar to the west eyewall of Hurricane Dennis. The closest instrumented gust measurement was 92 mph at Cactus Flat, to the southeast, after going behind the apex of the shelf cloud at left. This was just my dramatic little slice of the event. The broader derecho goes on record as among the most intense ever recorded. The event swept in a daylong rampage from southern Utah to North Dakota with over 400 reports of severe wind—most of them measured. Over 40 of those gusts were significant (74 mph or greater). [Back to Part 1]
4 NW Interior SD (6 Jun 20) Looking S
43.7883, -102.0323