Also, while taking this pic, I saw this weed. I don't what it is, but that stuff is some fierce competitor. I let it go in the garden last July, thinking I would just till it up when I planted my winter cover near Labor Day. But it came up again with my winter cover, which I thought the rye grass would out compete it, but I was wrong. Whatever it is , it began choking out my rye, oats, and austrian pea. It was a job getting it out of my garden.

I'm not sure about it being a derecho, I recall a couple of those back in the late 90's, maybe 97 and 98. They began from downbursting storms near Enid, as I recall, and sent 100 mph winds across the state. But those were more like a gust front, they did not last long. Last night was more like a hurricane. Winds here blew strong for a couple of hours.

The Ticker is calling it a " meso-low pressure system " , whatever the heck that is

http://ticker.mesonet.org

Lynn, The weather phenomenon experienced in parts of Oklahoma overnight and this morning is what meteorologists call a "wake low". You sometimes will have a wake low form behind lines of powerful thunderstorms that create high pressure. The difference between the high pressure created by the storms and the wake low is what gives rise to strong winds like y'all had there. It is, as you noted, different from a gust front. We see those gust fronts on the leading edges of lines of strong storms, and the wake lows are different in that they trail along behind lines of strong storms. We had a different kind of wind damage in our county last week, when collapsing thunderstorms created a heat burst, which can cause a rapid rise in temperatures, often in a fairly compact area, and very strong winds that bring down trees and power lines in and near that area. At our house last week we got the wind, but not the temperature rise, and people west of us got the temperature rise and the wind and people south of us got stronger wind than us and they had damage, so these sorts of weather events can affect people different just a few miles apart from one another. Mother Nature has many ways to wreak havoc on us at this time of the year.

If the onion necks are only bent and not broken, they should bulb up just fine. Time will tell.

That little plant looks like native purslane (Portulaca oleracea), and it is a fierce competitor. It also lacks the larger, prettier flowers of cultivated purslanes sold as bedding plants. Purslane is edible and can be harvested and added to salads and such. You can use purslane in the same way you'd use spinach or watercress. Personally, I weed them out because if you let one of them stay, before you know it, you'll have a hundred of them, and then a thousand of them. I let one stay in a raised bed of tomatoes one single time about 15 years ago and despite my best efforts to weed them out, I still have some pop up in that general area every single year. I suspect they will haunt me and my garden forever.

I hope your onions are going to be okay.

Dawn

Lynn, I remember a derecho in our area in 2004. Our friends were up on the roof our our barn-style garage that we were paying them to build for us, and I saw the derecho warning on the noon news so had to rush out there, get them off the roof, get heavy steel poles laid on the construction materials so they wouldn't fly away and get our friends in their trucks and headed home before the derecho hit. I remember the TV meteorologist gave us something like a 30-minute warning before the derecho would arrive, and our friends were literally walking into the door of their own home when the wind hit, so we barely made it. We were so grateful they were not up on the roof and hit by that wind unexpectedly.

I also doubt y'all had a derecho last night, since the derecho has to cover a linear area of 250 miles to actually be considered a derecho. I stand by my ID of it as a wake low, which is what we common folks call it. The mesonet gave you the official meteorology term for a wake low when they described it as a meso-low pressure system.

Dawn

Someone was singing praises to purslane on FB and I mentioned that we had none here. She said I did. She said EVERYONE has purslane. I said I was familiar with it and nope we didn't have any here. And she again told me I did. Hahaha end of our short-lived relationship. LOL

And wow. Learn something new every day. Today it's all about sudden strong winds. Thanks, all.

This was pretty incredible .