Furious winds roared across the U.S. plains May 12 with wind gusts over 100 miles per hour tearing across states from Kansas to South Dakota to Wisconsin. Power lines and trees were toppled, walls of dust kicked up and even some semi-trucks rolled.
The extreme weather event has been declared a Derecho, a long-lived thunderstorm complex that is sometimes also called an “inland hurricane” due to the extensive wind damage that often occurs. According to the National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center, there were 55 significant, hurricane-force wind gusts. “[Thursday was] the day with the 2nd most preliminary hurricane force wind gusts since at least 2004,” the center said on Twitter.
