When it comes to natural events or disasters, Houstonians are quite familiar, unfortunately, with flooding and hurricanes. On the other hand, some types of natural disasters might not ring a bell. Like what the heck is a derecho and has Houston ever been hit by a derecho storm?
According to the National Weather Service (NWS), “A derecho (pronounced similar to ‘deh-REY-cho’) is a widespread, long-lived wind storm that is associated with a band of rapidly moving showers or thunderstorms.” Derechos come with wind gusts of at least 58 mph (93 km/h) or greater along most of its length.
These destructive windstorms can damage more than 240 miles (around 400 km), but unlike hurricanes and tornadoes which come with a spiral pattern, a derecho’s damage is typically in a relatively straight swath. For Spanish speakers, the term should give it away; “derecho” in Spanish means “straight ahead.”
Derechos most commonly occur in two regions, according to the NWS: from the upper Mississippi Valley southeast into the Ohio Valley, or otherwise known as the “Corn Belt,” and from the southern Plains northeast into the mid-Mississippi Valley. They are extremely rare west of the Great Plains and occur relatively infrequently from east Texas into the southeastern states during the cool season (September to April). Most derechos (70%) occur during the warm season (May to August).
That pretty much sums up what a derecho is. Now, for the question: Has Houston ever had a derecho storm, the answer is yes.
(Photo Credit: National Weather Service)
Houston’s Experience with Derechos
Derechos aren’t as uncommon in Houston as you might expect.
“We have one every four or five years, but we’re usually at the starting point of an event that does damage in Louisiana and Mississippi and Alabama,” Matt Lanza, a meteorologist and managing editor of the popular website Space City Weather, told Texas Monthly. “We don’t usually see a lot of damage here.”
Lanza is referring to the derecho that caused widespread damage to Houston in 2024.
- The 2024 Houston Derecho
This derecho storm is still fresh in the memories of Houstonians.
On Thursday, May 16, meteorologists observed what looked like a big thunderstorm. Unexpectedly, it grew into a big “fist of wind” that was stronger and more powerful than anything that Space City has ever encountered in recent memory.
“Initially, it didn’t look like anything out of the ordinary was going to happen. It just looked like a big thunderstorm was going to come through. …” Lanza recounts. “Then it kind of balled into this fist of wind that just punched its way across central Harris County. I was looking at radar and thinking, This is not normal. The wind was 100, 150 miles per hour less than two thousand feet above the ground.”
- The Derecho’s Devastating Damage
The resulting damage was massive: 900,000 residents and businesses lost power in Harris County and the derecho spawned several tornadoes that killed eight people in the Houston area.
Downtown Houston looked like a battleground, with shattered skyscraper windows and toppled trees and fences. The devastation was akin to the 2021 winter storm and, despite similar wind speeds, was less than Hurricane Beryl’s whipping just two months later.
“It was kind of like a war zone,” Heights resident Daniel Lopez shared to KHOU 11. “It wasn’t only trees. It was roofing debris everywhere. It was just a lot less chaotic. That’s what it was.”
The derecho hit Enterprise Plaza, Wells Fargo Plaza, the Total Energies Tower, the Chevron Building Auditorium, and Wedge International Tower. In total, 18 high-rise buildings in the metro, each at least 600 feet tall and designed to withstand gusts of up to 150 mph, had over 3,000 of their windows shattered, in addition to other damages.
Lanza himself, who has lived in Houston for more than a decade, admits that he has never seen anything like it. “I’ve never seen that before, at least not here. You see it every once in a while on the Great Plains, but that usually impacts rural areas. This time it was over the heart of the fourth-largest city in the country,” he told Texas Monthly.
- Little Warning Time
Experts attribute the devastation to little warning time. “Unfortunately the warning time was as little as twenty minutes in western Harris County, and maybe an hour for downtown,” Lanza noted.
Since derechos aren’t as common as other natural events, only a few meteorologists recognized the warming signs until right before the storm hit. This barely gave residents any time to seek shelter.
How many other derechos in Houston’s history
Other Derechos in Houston’s History
Numerous intense storms have been recorded in Houston’s history. If you take a look at local newspaper archives, you might find damages and devastation that’s similar to those documented after a derecho in recent years. However, meteorology and weather records haven’t been as advanced and as reliable as they are today, so it’s totally possible that other derechos might have hit Space City in the past but have not been recorded as such.
So, other than the 2024 derecho storm, there’s no other confirmed derecho event in Houston. However, a more recent derecho that has been etched into Houstonian’s memories is the one that hit Texas in 1986. While it may not have hit Space City itself, it is a significant derecho event that hit close to home, so it bears discussion.
Texas Boaters’ Derecho
For pleasure boaters of eastern and southeastern Texas, Saturday, May 17, 1986, looked like the start of a good weekend. In fact, several activities were scheduled that day. In addition to the hundreds of individual boaters heading out to the lakes and coastal waters of the region, in Lake Livingston, hundreds of boaters were converging for a fishing tournament and a racing contest, while in Galveston Bay, many sail boaters were arriving for scheduled regattas.
It was a busy weekend, but the sky had other ideas. The beginnings of a derecho was developing in Central Texas around mid-day, before swiftly moving through Southeast Texas toward Waco and Temple, and crossing the Gulf of Mexico coast in the late afternoon and early evening.
The derecho had estimated winds of 90 mph and instigated the waves on lakes to rise to 10 feet. As a result, hundreds of boats were capsized, blown ashore, damaged or completely destroyed. What’s worse, a total of six individuals drowned, five on Lake Livingston and one on Lake Steinhagen. An unknown number were injured, and more than 100 boaters had to be rescued.
