Photo by Valerie Hinojosa

Scan your Twitter feed right now for weather-related messages, and you’re likely to see many punctuated with the hashtag “#derecho.” Yes, the D.C. area is currently under a severe thunderstorm warning, with a torrential blast of rain, wind, and thunder pelting down. The furious opening of the skies is plenty terrifying, and it’s not unexpected that such a weather event would lead to a digital callback of the storm that struck the region nearly one year ago.

But that storm just now? No, that wasn’t a derecho.

Derechos are common in the early summer months, occurring about once every four years in the mid-Atlantic (though last year’s was especially violent), but the term only arises when certain conditions are in effect. The National Weather Service defines a derecho as a line of storm cells at least 240 miles across, producing a series of microbursts—quick, intense storms—over a wide area. Last year’s derecho struck an area that pelted D.C, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Wind speeds in a derecho can also be lower than 58 miles per hour, the rate at which winds are considered “severe.”

What the D.C. area just saw this morning and this afternoon, and what are continuing to move northeast, are very large weather patterns, but ones that meet the definition of a severe thunderstorm. In fact, thunderstorms can be more intense than the average derecho, and are defined as “severe” when they include wind gusts of greater than 58 miles per hour (which today’s storms did), hail at least one inch in diameter (hailstones estimated to be the size of half-dollar coins fell in Frederick, Md. this morning), or a tornado (one was spotted in Colesville, Md. just before 4. p.m.).

So, bummer for the hashtags, but that wasn’t a derecho. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be plenty to grouse about on Twitter. Reports are coming in from across D.C. and the surrounding area of tree limbs fallen on streets, such as one that is currently blocking the 1400 block of 18th Street NW.

Photo via District Department of Transportation

And who knows? We may soon have another Pepco torch song on our playlists. The power utility reports about 41,000 customers are currently without power, including nearly 40,000 in Montgomery County.