Derecho

A couple of hours ago, Carl got message from his cousin in Iowa telling that a large storm with strong winds had blown through their area and was heading toward Chicago. We started watching storm tracking on our phones and the local weather on TV and saw that a big storm was coming.

The weather reports were calling it a "derecho". I've heard this term a few times, but only recently - I don't remember hearing it from my childhood or most of my adult life. I have looked up some information online (primarily Wikipedia) and it seems to indicate that the term has been used from the late 1800s (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derecho), though most of the listed events were from 1977 onwards (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_derecho_events).

We saw that there was a tornado warning for our area and decided to head to the shelter area (the restroom building) here in the campground. We weren't sure what the protocol would be as the COVID-19 precautions for the campground indicate that only one person can be in the restroom at a time. We took Miss Kitty in her kennel - she was not impressed! As it turned out, we were the only folks who took shelter in the restroom. We waited out the initial strong winds and then returned to Gracie. We brought the slides in on the side where the wind was blowing so strongly, mainly because the slide toppers - canvas covers over the slides - were really being buffetted. 

We saw one RV that had left the window awnings out and one looked pretty bent up. We were glad that we were here when the winds started and we brought them in before heading to the restroom/storm shelter.

So... if you heard about big storms in the Chicago area - yes, they were here, but we are all fine!