The storm that hammered West Virginia, the rest of the Mid-Atlantic and parts of the Midwest was one for the ages.
All but two of the state’s 55 counties sustained some damage or loss of power. At peak, more than half of the state’s homes and businesses were without power.
Appalachian Power President Charles Patton said the high winds blew down some 70 high voltage power lines, leaving substations without power and taking down large blocks of customers.
By midmorning Monday, APCo’s request for repair crews from other states was above 1,000. Those crews had to come from as far away as Kansas, since nearby states had their own massive outages to deal with.
Patton revised his prediction to say that it could be as late as early next week until all power was restored.
Hundreds and hundreds of trees were blown down, taking power lines with them, damaging homes and buildings, and blocking roads and driveways.
With no electricity, gas stations were unable to pump fuel. Motorists lined up at stations that were open, quickly draining their supplies. Some travelers were stranded, forced to simply wait at closed gas stations until they got power or fuel.
Communities were unable to operate their water treatment plants. There have been runs on bottled water, ice and other supplies.
The state dispatched some 250 National Guard members, mostly to go door-to-door to check to see if storm victims needed any help.
Meanwhile, afternoon temperatures soared into the 90’s, sending many without power searching for some place with air conditioning. Churches and community centers set up cooling stations for the hot and tired.
Weather experts were busy explaining how and why one storm could do so much damage. It’s called a "derecho" (pronounced "deh-REY-cho"). It’s a Spanish word meaning "straight" or "straight line." According the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a derecho is "a widespread, long-lived storm that is associated with a band of rapidly moving showers and thundershowers."
This derecho started near Chicago on Friday and, over the next ten hours, traveled east about 600 miles. In West Virginia, wind speeds topped 70 mph.
These kinds of storms are uncommon for us. A NOAA fact sheet about derechos puts West Virginia in a band that has about one a year, but even then they are rarely this size.
Until now, one of the biggest derechos to affect us was on April 9, 1991. That storm started in Arkansas and moved northeast through Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania.
Two people were killed and 86 were injured in West Virginia during that historic storm. Fortunately, the human cost from this storm does not appear to be nearly as high.
But we have a ways to go to get back to normalcy… a long, hot week where frustrations will build the longer the power is out and the gas lines continue. We will get through it, of course. We always do.
And in the years ahead when the skies grow dark and the winds pick up, West Virginians will remember the great derecho of June 2012.