UPDATE: The NWS has also issued a blog on this event, with some nice radar images.
Katie posted this Comment on my blog yesterday:
Jesse, I was in Salisbury, MD this weekend and Saturday night around midnight, some storms moved through the area, however at the house I was at, we were never hit directly from the storm. But after the storm, around 1am or so, some wicked winds came through, gusts at high as 60MPH! There was no rain, no lightning or thunder... my fiance and I thought a tornado was coming because it was so sudden. There was a storm report of trees down in the area, so I know we weren't imagining it. Do you know what that was? A gust front perhaps? I really don't know. Thanks!
Good call, Katie. I believed at first it was a gust front. And it was, but a specific type of event called a "heat burst." You can get more info from WikiPedia & Habyhints, but basically it's the "hot" version of a typical gust front - air falls out of a thunderstorm, hits the ground and spreads out. After coming to this conclusion, I Googled a bit and found other weather bloggers agreeing at MyFoxPhilly and Phillyweather.net. There were no official news articles on the topic.
There was a single storm report was issued 2 miles east-northeast of the city, saying "NUMEROUS TREES DOWN AT OLD OCEAN CITY RD AND SHAMROCK RD." at 05:50 GMT, or 1:50 AM. The radar shots above were taken at 10:15 PM and 2:00 AM, showing a thunderstorm moving east-southeast then dissipating before it got to Salisbury - I'm not sure what we're seeing on radar at 2:00 is actually the gust front or just what was left of the storm.
The local weather stations caught the gust as well, and the associated temperature drop. Above is a graph from MD037, a Maryland D.O.T. station which jumped from 76 at 4:50 AM to 87 at 5:50! It also shows two wind gusts which is interesting. (See also KSBY - the airport which gusted to 52 mph!) Here is a map of temperatures at 2 AM from MESOWEST (The Government Mesonet), notice how localized the event is!
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I go to Salisbury University and was outside when this event occurred. The winds were absolutely insane. For about 5 minutes or so the winds were gusting and blew over just about anything left outside
Posted by Zack | May 4, 2009 1:12 AM
We had one hit one night during summer - temp went from 80's to 107 during the night with high winds!
Posted by David Gregg | May 1, 2009 11:34 AM
Jesse,
Thanks for looking into this! I greatly appreciate it! That storm report you mention was actually just across the street from the house I was at, while we didn't have any trees down at the house, the winds caused quite a pollen storm where it was unbearable to just stand outside.
Thank you again for looking into this!
Katie
Posted by Katie | April 28, 2009 10:28 AM
I observed this event in Choptank, MD on Saturday night as well. There was a great deal of lightning to my south and southwest with calm conditions when suddenly a WSW wind started with gusts to near 50 MPH. You could feel the temperature rise immediately and the gusty winds continued for over 10 minutes. We received no rain at all during the event. I recalled reading about such heat burst storms taking place in the plains states but had never heard of such an event this far east.
Posted by Randy | April 27, 2009 4:26 PM
I was in Oxford MD on Saturday night and noticed the same phenomenon. We were watching a great light show from storms off to the west (maybe southwest), then suddenly around midnight we got hit by huge gusts of wind, the highest recorded by the household anemometer was 48 mph. There was a trace of rain but mostly wind. What was interesting was that the home weather station said the hourly average was 4 mph - so the gusts came after a dead calm!
Thanks for the question, the blog, and the great research and information on this.
Posted by Lynne | April 27, 2009 1:33 PM