Saturday, May 9th, 2009

May 8, 2009: Derecho brings destruction to region

A very long 48 hours. We had severe weather almost through the entire night last night (this morning). Several large hailstorms moved across South Illinois and West Kentucky. Hail larger than golfballs were reported. That set the stage for more severe weather during the morning and afternoon hours. The severe weather continues tonight (now May 9th – 1 AM). Long duration event because of a frontal system that just will not move out of the region.

Rainfall totals of 3-6" have been widespread over the last week. Flooding is occurring over the entire region. Rivers are high and continue to rise.

A powerful storm system brought severe damage to our counties today. Winds of over 100 mph were reported in South Illinois. Damaging winds also caused damage across South Missouri and portions of West Kentucky. Graves County Kentucky reported some structure damage to barns. By far, though, the worst damage was from Carbondale, Illinois towards Harrisburg, Illinois. Hundreds of homes and buildings have extensive damage. Thousands of trees were blown down. One of the most widespread wind events in our region in recent memory. Damage will be well into the millions.

Portions of Kentucky have been issued disaster declarations. The storms have killed 3 people in our region and injured 30-50.

Needless to say it has been a long day – not good for celebrating a birthday. We did, however, manage to squeek out a few hours this evening and went out to eat and saw the new Star Trek movie. 🙂 So, that was fun! Hopefully we get some better weather in the coming days.

We went to the farm this afternoon to make sure there was no damage. Thankfully there was not. I took a few more photographs of the observation deck area.

Observation deck on the back of the house.