High winds blow train cars off trestle across Lufkin's north loop
Section of loop expected to remain closed Monday
Derailed
ANDY ADAMS/The Lufkin News
Straight-line
winds this morning blew rail cars off the railroad trestle — and their
own wheels — across North John Redditt Drive, near the Pepsi plant on
Lufkin's north loop. The loop is closed from state Highway 103 west to
U.S. 69 north.
ANDY ADAMS/The Lufkin News
Billboard down
Sunday
morning's straight-line winds that blew railroad cars off a trestle
across Loop 287 near U.S. 69 north also destroyed a couple of billboards
at that intersection, sending debris into nearby trees and power lines.
Posted:
Sunday, December 13, 2015 9:17 am |
Updated: 8:27 pm, Sun Dec 13, 2015.
By ANDY ADAMS and STEVE KNIGHT/The Lufkin News
Straight-line
winds on Sunday morning blew rail cars off the railroad trestle across
Lufkin's north loop, near the Pepsi plant and U.S. Highway 69 north.
Texas
Department of Transportation officials said Sunday afternoon that they
expected that section of the loop to remain closed for some or all of
today as they clear the rail cars and repair the highway.
Two rail
cars fell to the roadway beneath the railroad bridge. Dozens other rail
cars came off the track, as well. A&NR Railroad owns and operates
the railroad from which the cars were derailed.
Motorist Jose
Torres posted this on The Lufkin News' Facebook page on Sunday morning:
"I got there right after it happened and you could hear the metal
clanking as it was still slightly falling. No cars were pinned and noone
looked to be injured. The train is always stationary at that location
so no train operators seemed to have been injured either."
Barricades
will remain in place and motorists will be detoured until the roadway
is cleared, according to Rhonda Oaks, public information officer for the
Lufkin District. Residents with direct access as well as businesses
within the barricaded area will be accommodated to and from their
locations, she said.
“Removing the rail cars in the safest way
possible will require certain things to happen,” Oaks said. “Our
officials have devised a traffic control plan for motorists until the
cars can be removed, and we are hoping that will be by Monday evening.
We are waiting on equipment that is being sent from Houston before the
cleanup can begin.”
Read More Here
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The
Lufkin, Texas Police Department shared a photo on its Facebook page
Sunday morning after winds blew a train off the tracks as it crossed a
highway. An update says it will take at least 48 hours to upright the 64
rail cars.
Read More Here
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Wikipedia.org
Straight-line winds (also known as
thundergusts and
hurricanes of the prairie) are very strong winds that can produce damage, demonstrating a lack of a rotational damage pattern.
[4] Such rotational damage patterns are associated with cyclonic storms including
tornadoes and
tropical cyclones. Straight-line winds are common with the
gust front
of a thunderstorm or originate with a downburst from a thunderstorm.
These events can cause considerable damage, even in the absence of a
tornado. The winds can reach 130 km/h (80 mph) and can last for periods
of twenty minutes. Such straight-line wind events are most common during
the spring when instability is highest and weather fronts routinely
cross the country. Straight-line wind events in the form of
derechos can take place in areas outside of the traditional tornado alley (such as in the
northeastern United States/
Great Lakes Region and across southern Canada).
Straight-line
winds may be damaging to marine interests. Small ships, cutters and
sailboats are at risk from this meteorological phenomenon.
.......................
Derecho
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A shelf cloud along the leading edge of a derecho photographed in
Minnesota
A
derecho (
, from
Spanish:
derecho [deˈɾetʃo], "straight") is a widespread, long-lived,
straight-line wind storm that is associated with a land-based, fast-moving group of
severe thunderstorms.
[1]
Derechos can cause hurricane force winds,
tornadoes, heavy rains, and flash floods.
Convection-induced winds take on a
bow echo (backward "C") form of
squall line, forming in an area of
wind divergence in upper levels of the
troposphere, within a region of low-level
warm air advection and rich low-level moisture. They travel quickly in the direction of movement of their associated storms, similar to an
outflow boundary (gust front), except that the wind is
sustained and increases in strength behind the front, generally exceeding
hurricane-force.
A warm-weather phenomenon, derechos occur mostly in summer, especially
during June, July, and August in the Northern Hemisphere, within areas
of moderately strong
instability and moderately strong vertical
wind shear. They may occur at any time of the year and occur as frequently at night as during the daylight hours.
............................
WHAT ARE STRAIGHT-LINE WINDS?
METEOROLOGIST JEFF HABY
There are several terms that mean the same as straight-line winds and
they are convective wind gusts, outflow and downbursts. Straight-line
wind is wind that comes out of a thunderstorm. If these winds meet or
exceed 58 miles per hours then the storm is classified as
severe
by the National Weather Service. These winds are produced by the
downward momentum in the downdraft region of a thunderstorm. An
environment conducive to strong straight-line wind is one in which the
updrafts and thus downdrafts are strong, the air is dry in the middle troposphere and the storm has a fast forward motion.
A storm with a strong updraft will tend to have a strong downdraft. When the
CAPE
is very high then strong or severe convective wind gusts could occur.
Dry air aloft will entrain into the downdraft. This promotes
evaporative cooling
and this further enhances the negative buoyancy of a parcel. A cold
parcel of air surrounded by warm air will sink since the cold air is
more dense. The colder the parcel is compared to the surrounding air
then the faster it will sink. Dramatically cooler air is often noticed
at the surface when the downburst air reaches the observer. When a storm
has a fast forward motion the rate that the downdraft is moving is
added to the storm motion. This can produce strong to severe winds out
ahead of the storm as the storm approaches.
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