Yesterday's daily feature noted the extreme instability that existed in the atmosphere, but the lack of forcing to realize all that potential energy. On Friday morning, a storm cluster was able to get organized over Illinois and trucked it all the way to the eastern coast producing hundreds of reports of wind damage and should easily meet the derecho classification. The featured image shows a time composite of maximum NEXRAD reflectivity for the event. You can see the path this storm system took as it moved along the classic 'ring of fire' setup with an extremely strong high pressure system to its south. Another cluster of storms got going over Iowa Friday afternoon and caused damage in eastern Iowa. These storms are able to create their own cold air mass at the surface and then push it along providing the lift necessary to realize the available potential energy.

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Tags:   derecho   ringoffire