Seeing as I was among the lucky ones who got reliable-ish internet and power back this morning in the Midwest, a brief thread about what the hell happened here yesterday:

6 states in the Midwest were swept by something called a Derecho storm, which features straight walls of wind instead of spiraling (so, different than tornadoes). It travelled 700 miles in 14 hours, starting in Iowa and ending in Wisconsin.

Across the region we’re seeing reports of high force wind rolling in with almost no warning- personally, I got 20 minutes only because I knew someone in a town two hours west. Semis were blown of the highway. Roofs were ripped off of houses and arenas with people in them.

Thousands of powerlines, internet lines, and cell lines are down. Fires are spontaneously starting as power surges turn on and off. As of now, 24 hours post storm, there are absolutely no accurate death + injury counts, but what we do know-

As of 10 AM in Iowa there are still 1 million people in the Midwest without power, in the middle of a pandemic, a raging hot summer, and the worst economic depression in the history of this absolutely fractured nation.

This storm had wind speeds up to 100 MPH. For reference, your average tornado speed is 20. Category One hurricanes max at 95. So this was equivalent to a wall of straight shooting category 2 hurricane wind slicing through the heartland.

And the kicker? The frequency of these storms are increasing. The first derecho was in 1877. The next was in 1965. In the 35 years b/w 65 and 2000, there were 14. In the 20 years between 2000 and now, we’ve had 58 already.

We know already that climate change causes increases in both severity and frequency of severe weather, so this isn’t a surprise, but it is a devastation. We need a green new deal in the Midwest because we need significant investment in our disaster relief services.

We need protection for frontline communities, CENTERING our indigenous population. We need good paying union jobs to pull us out of this devastating depression. We need to stop pouring gasoline on the fire that created this event. We need politicians who give a goddamn about us.

For my friends in the Midwest: please stay safe today, and check out this document with community aid resources listed: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-4ZUfhDhcy0j03Vz3VDchswp9OnxSkB7qGt9wjmcKLA/edit

And if you have more to add please submit them here: https://forms.gle/7unVGchoXn1vgvrc9