myBlessedHope

I heard this described as a hurricane without rain…wow quite a storm!

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“Historic” Storm Sets Records for Lowest Pressure in U.S.

Large and powerful storm system re-writes the record books for lowest pressure recorded from a non-hurricane

A massive storm system set records on Tuesday for the lowest surface pressure ever observed in the continental United States from a non-tropical cyclone.

The storm was centered over northern Minnesota, causing barometers to drop as low as 28.20″, a record for a non-tropical cyclone. The pressure gradients caused by the rapidly intensifying low produced wind gusts over 70mph in Illinois and damage in several other states.

Indianapolis also saw severe winds that forced the brief evacuation of a 48-story office building.

Chicago’s 110-story Willis Tower, the nation’s tallest building, closed the Skydeck observatory and retracted “The Ledge” attraction — four glass boxes that jut out from the building’s 103rd floor.

In St. Louis, pre-dawn strong winds were blamed for a partial building collapse that sent bricks, mortar, roofing and some window air-conditioning units raining down onto a sidewalk. No one was injured, and inspectors were going through the 1920s-era building.

Nearly 220,000 customers across the Midwest lost electricity as fallen trees downed power lines.
Commonwealth Edison said 76,000 customers were without power in the Chicago area at one point. In Indiana, more than 60,000 lost power. Another 60,000 lost power in and around Cincinnati, while outages topped 23,000 in Michigan.

The massive storm muscled its way across an area that stretched from the Dakotas to the eastern Great Lakes, where waves up to 25 feet were predicted along with some beach erosion.

More than 500 flights were canceled at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, a major hub for American and United airlines. O’Hare as well as Midway also reported delays.

Indianapolis International Airport also reported some flight delays, and the high winds closed two of three runways at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

The storm system also produced several tornadoes on Tuesday from Wisconsin to Alabama as severe thunderstorm warnings blanketed much of the Midwest, and tornado watches were issued from Arkansas to Ohio.

The rare system mesmerized meteorologists across the country because of its size and the speed of which it rapidly deepened, producing pressures below 955 millibars, similar to a Category 3 hurricane over water, but with much less destructive power over land.

The National Weather Service said the system’s pressure reading Tuesday was the lowest ever in a non-tropical storm in the mainland U.S.
If confirmed, that would be worse than the pressure that produced the Blizzard of 1978, the March 1993 “Storm of the Century” or the November 1975 storm that sank the Edmund Fitzgerald freighter over the Great Lakes, memorialized in a song by Gordon Lightfoot.

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