A derecho climatology (2004–2021) in the United States based on machine learning identification of bow echoes

Abstract

Abstract. Due to their persistent widespread severe winds, derechos pose significant threats to human safety and property, and they are as hazardous and fatal as many tornadoes and hurricanes. Yet, automated detection of derechos remains challenging due to the absence of spatiotemporally continuous observations and the complex criteria employed to define the phenomenon. This study proposes a physically based definition of derechos that contains the key features of derechos described in the literature and allows their automated objective identification using either observations or model simulations. The automated detection is composed of three algorithms: the Flexible Object Tracker algorithm to track mesoscale convective systems (MCSs), a semantic segmentation convolutional neural network to identify bow echoes, and a comprehensive algorithm to classify MCSs as derechos or non-derecho events. Using the new approach, we develop a novel high-resolution (4 km and hourly) observational dataset of derechos over the United States east of the Rocky Mountains from 2004 to 2021. The dataset is analyzed to document the derecho climatology in the United States. Many more derechos (increased by ~50–400 %) are identified in the dataset (~31 events per year) than in previous estimations (~6–21 events per year), but the spatial distribution and seasonal variation patterns resemble earlier studies with a peak occurrence in the Great Plains and Midwest during the warm season. In addition, around 20 % of damaging gust (≥ 25.93 m s^-1) reports are produced by derechos during the dataset period over the United States east of the Rocky Mountains. The dataset is available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10884046 (Li et al., 2024).