The Story Behind the Story of the Derecho

Earlier this week, I shared the story of derecho 2020. For those of you who don't live in Southwest Michigan and aren't sure what this derecho thing is, it's defined as "a line of intense, widespread and fast-moving windstorms and sometimes thunderstorms that moves across a great distance and is characterized by damaging winds."

Winds reached 66 mph here, according to reports, but the storm did much more damage in other places. Iowa, for one, reported wind gusts of 112 mph, basically hurricane-strength winds. We lost power Monday, but we were back up by Tuesday night, so we were pretty fortunate. The storm did leave behind a little work for me, though. Part of the neighbor's tree cracked, and a large limb needed to be cut down.

The neighbor and I got to it on Wednesday night, managing not to take out the side fence, the back fence, the swing set or the power line (boy, would we have been popular with the neighbors). The fire pit took a hit and will need to be cemented back in place, but otherwise you'd think we knew what we were doing.

For this week's column, I wrote about the storm, the aftermath and my (sad) adventures in chainsawing. Be sure to give it a read.