Residents of the US state of South Dakota are accustomed to devastating hurricanes (they are called here by the Spanish word dereicho). However, they were surprised to see how the sky above them turned green before another natural disaster.
In some areas of the state, wind speeds reached 160 km / h, there were no reports of casualties. The power of the "dereicho" is explained by the fact that it is formed from several fast-moving hurricanes at once, which at some stage merge into one.
The sky acquires its unusual color due to the peculiarities of the refraction of the light of the setting sun in the water drops of the thunderclouds that this series of storms carries. It is not uncommon for a storm to also turn the sky purple or even completely black during the daytime.
In August 2020, a powerful derecho left more than 250 thousand people without electricity, destroyed several houses, and destroyed crops in the states of Iowa and Illinois, the newspaper notes. At least four people died as a result of the hurricane, according to the US Weather Service.
The front of the hurricane that passed on Tuesday, July 5, was more than 385 kilometers, and wind speeds reached 160 kilometers per hour. The Met Office also received several reports of the size of the hail: in the city of Sioux Falls, hailstones were observed two and a half centimeters in diameter, and in Lake Wilson, Minnesota, a hailstone of seven centimeters, that is, approximately the size of a baseball, was reported.