Monday’s storm brought intense wind gusts and torrential rainfall throughout Iowa, which caused lots of damage in its wake.

Weatherology Meteorologist Megan Mulford says the storm is being categorized as a derecho, which is a straight line wind storm that has at least 40-50 miles per hour wind gusts and travels at least 250 miles. She describes the scope of the storm.

“It traveled over 770 miles in 14 hours. So it went from like eastern, southeastern South Dakota and didn’t even lose juice until it got into parts of Ohio.”

Mulford compares Monday’s storm to another weather phenomenon.

“Just the amount of power it had. A lot of these, we fall anywhere from 70-105 miles per hour wind gusts or sustained winds. And that’s something you see in a category one or category two hurricane. So it was basically a category two hurricane sweeping across.”

Mulford notes the amount of damage that this storm caused is worse than a lower scale tornado because it was so much more widespread. She adds, there is an average of one derecho storm per year in the Midwest region.        

Click the link below to see a video clip of the storm in downtown Jefferson.