Damage Reports and Photos From Derecho.

Yesterday, around the midday hours, a line of intense thunderstorms moved through the area, bringing with it high winds in excess of 70 mph.  The intense winds caused tree damage all over Northwest Ohio and Northeast Indiana, including several trees that fell in Antwerp.  In Antwerp, a large tree fell on a house on the corner of Madison and W. River Street, as winds of up to 70 mph gusted through Antwerp, before the leading edge of thunderstorms moved through.  According to the SPC, whoever made the report to the National Weather Service, also reported that multiple other trees were down across Antwerp, along with numerous tree limbs.  In Paulding, winds were actually measured at 71 mph at the EMA office.  In Fort Wayne, trees and power lines were reported down all throughout the city, as winds were estimated in city at 70 mph.  On I-69, a semi-truck was flipped over by the strong winds in De Kalb County.  Not only was there wind damage here in Northwest Ohio, but severe wind damage was especially bad along the Ohio/Michigan/Indiana state line corridor, where numerous trees were reported down in Angola and Fremont, along with numerous power outages in the area.  The severe storms that made up the squall line initially formed on Sunday afternoon, in western Nebraska.  These storms were initially forecasted to move into the regions of high instability across Missouri and Illinois when the storms were over eastern Nebraska, but there was a very strong cap in the atmosphere, preventing any storms from forming in these areas.  This caused something called the "ring of fire effect", which means that storms rode up and over the ridge of high pressure which was causing an extreme heat wave across most of the central and southern United States.  The storms finally congealed into a squall line over Iowa by early morning Monday, causing numerous reports of severe wind damage and power outages.  By about 8 a.m., the storms had moved into the Chicago area, producing winds in excess of 80 mph, all throughout Chicago.  This caused over 800,000 power outages at one time in the Chicago area, making it one of the largest power outages in one of the electric company's history.  These then produced the highest winds over Northwest Indiana, where Michigan City, IN reported winds as high as 85 mph.  When the storms made it our area, they had begun to turn southeastward and headed into central Ohio.  By this time the storms began to restrengthen, after they had weakened over North Central Ohio.  The storms continued to produce wind damage all the way to Chesapeake Bay.
       Just to the south of this squall line, an intense heat wave was ongoing across most of Indiana, Illinois, most of the Ohio Valley, and most of the Southern United States.  Not only was their high heat, but humidity levels were approaching record highs.  Dew points as high as 85 degrees were reported as far north as Lafayette, IN.  There was actually a widespread area of 80+ degree dew points, with a much larger area of 70+ degree dew points.  These extremely high dew points combined with temperatures in the upper 90's and lower 100's across a vast area, were causing heat indices as high as 128 degrees in Northern Kentucky and Lower Indiana.  These levels were actually the highest in the world at that time.
      If any of you have additional damage photos, please e-mail them to me at storm_reportsjoshua@yahoo.com.  Thank you!