Hurricane Who?
Three twenty-two in the afternoon of August 3 and I am just crossing the Frederick C. Malkus Bridge over the Choptank River into Cambridge, Maryland. Off in the distance in the direction of my parent’s house, I could see bolts of lightning crashing out of the dark cloud mass moving up from the south. A couple of small issues delayed my departure and of course I had to stop at Trader Joe’s, or can I say Trader Jose’s, or wait maybe now it’s “The Supermarket Formerly Known as Trader Joe’s” to pick up some wine (that’s a whole other story). Now a little angry that I am behind schedule, I was hoping to beat the rain and have some time to prep for the storm.
As I drove into their driveway I found my mother and my father attempting to secure their kayaks on a rack he had built outside their garage. My dad was trying to climb a small stepladder and my mother was arguing with him to stay off the ladder. Good timing I thought, reinforcing my decision to go out there.
I had been following the path of Tropical Storm What’s His Name all weekend.
What is his name?
Hurricane EE I EE I O…I think?
No that can’t be right. There are a lot of “EE I’s” in there but don’t think there are any “O’s.”
Can I buy a consonant please, Pat?
Anyway, all the models had it moving directly over Dorchester County, Maryland, the area of the Eastern Shore of where my parents live. It was still believed it would be upgraded to Hurricane before making landfall somewhere in the Carolinas. The storm wasn’t expected to be over Dorchester County and Woolford until about 9 a.m. Tuesday so after securing the kayaks and a few other items in the yard it was time to relax, get some sleep, and wait until the morning.
The first tornado touched down near Vienna, Maryland at 6:01 a.m. way ahead of the 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. that we expected. Vienna is further down Route 50 closer to Salisbury. When I got up at 6:44 the new tornado warning included the towns of Secretary and Hurlock on the eastern side of Dorchester County.
Raining hard, the river was high but the wind not too bad. We watched the local news station out of Salisbury to keep up with the storm’s progression and the tornado warnings as we waited it out.
We watched as the eyewall passed over our area, the wind briefly kicked up but soon according to the weather station we were watching, we would be out of trouble as Tropical Storm What’s His Name moved toward Philadelphia and New Jersey.
Friday, June 29, 2012, was a really hot day and part of a heatwave our Northern Virginia area was experiencing. But by that evening we would experience a weather event most had never even heard of. We learned a new word almost as difficult to pronounce as the name of this week’s Hurricane.
We experienced…a Derecho.
According to NOAA, Derechos are fast-moving bands of thunderstorms with destructive winds. The winds can be as strong as those found in hurricanes or even tornadoes! Unlike hurricanes and tornadoes, these winds follow straight lines.
On this particular day in June when the temperature hit 104 degrees, a small thunderstorm that began in Iowa would begin its journey east and as it crossed Indiana it would become a Derecho. As it continued its route towards the east and encountered the Appalachian Mountains, instead of losing steam as often happens with storms reaching the mountains, the hot humid air mass that existed that day on the other side provided additional energy. By the time it reached the Baltimore/Washington, DC corridor and its suburbs including mine in Northern Virginia, winds had reached as much as 60 to 80 miles an hour. Reston a town adjacent to mine logged a gust of 79 miles per hour.
When it was over it left destruction and over a million people in our area without power. The restoration of power took an unusually long time as you might expect. Ice was scarce, and without refrigeration and freezers, food was lost. As the heatwave continued, without air conditioning life became really uncomfortable very quickly. I remember Kim and I sitting in the blow-up pool we had for Cameron for hours. After spending a sleepless Saturday night due to the heat, on Sunday I put the kids up in a nearby hotel that had backup power. Cameron was only two years old at the time and there is nothing worse than being stuck in a hot house with hot, sweaty, cranky daughters.
No, as they say, I ain’t doing it, I would rather sit in a blow-up pool in my back yard with temperatures over 100 degrees for a week than deal with all that. It was well worth the investment.
I don’t remember exactly when our power finally did come back on but I think it was Tuesday which was relatively good as I remember. It was a miserable experience and after that weekend we all knew what the word Derecho meant.
As Tropical Storm Whatchamacallit began its movement north the local weather people began to draw lines on their weather maps indicating the “all clear” area. If you were behind the line you were all good. So once we were safely behind that line we began to relax and listened as the weather stories focused on counties further north and in Delaware.
Then all of a sudden our winds shifted to the west. That was an even better signal that we were now on the better side of the storm.
Though we received a lot of rain we dodged the tornadoes and the wind we had from the storm was minimal.
Or was it?
Gradually that wind from the west began to get stronger.
And then it got even stronger.
And the river awoke with huge white caps that crashed onto the docks and bulkheads creating spray normally only seen with an ocean wave.
And the rain came down even harder as trees bent and broke and were pulled up from their roots.
Now that we were safely behind the “all clear” line, we suddenly had a real storm to contend with. And in a short period of time while our local weather folks in Salisbury talked about Dover and above, somehow our “Hurricane What’s His Name ” had returned.
As the waves smashed against the bulkheads and the docks up and down the river they began to break up. The familiar duck blind in the cove up the river disappeared and ended up in a nearby yard.
My dad’s pier, like the other piers up and down the river, began to break up as well.
Trees fell up and down the street.
“Hey,” I said as I messaged the TV station via Facebook Messenger, “we have some serious weather here in Woolford!” But still no mention. Then I even sent a video. But no response.
What the heck was going on?
Three tractor-trailers on the Frederick C. Malkus Bridge had been blown over!
And we were “all clear.”
Finally, as our new storm began to calm down, we started to get a mention and an explanation of what was going on.
And on Tuesday, like that day in June of 2012 when we learned what a Derecho was, we learned what a Sting Jet was.
According to the internet and the local weather guy:
A sting jet is a relatively localized jet of rapidly descending cold air inside a deep extratropical cyclone. It affects a small region, compared to the size of the cyclone, and lasts only several hours. Destructive winds of over 150 km/h (93 miles an hour) have been attributed to sting jets.
So while Tropical Storm EE I EE I O was marching across the Delmarva and into Pennsylvania and New Jersey, in Dorchester County, Maryland we had a Sting Jet!
As the winds began to subside and the rain stopped, I cleared the pine tree that fallen in the front from the road. Then I collected the boards from the neighbor’s dock that included parts of three nearby docks. I assessed the damage to my dad’s dock and would put the repairs off to another day.
I picked up the branches and the crab traps that had blown into the neighbor’s yard.
I spoke with some of the neighbors who shared stories of similar damage.
All in all though, no one was hurt and the damage could be repaired or removed.
And for the second time in my life, I experienced a new weather phenomenon. Well, new to me and the local weather guy on TV who admitted he had never seen this before.
Though I am having a little fun with the name of this storm that most of couldn’t pronounce, including a few weather persons I listened to, my prayers go out to those who suffered serious damage to house and home, physical injury, and especially the families of the at least nine people who lost their lives to the storm.
ISAIAS
ees-ah-EE-ahs
EE I…EE I… OOOOOOOOO…
The end.
