I learned another weather phenomenon this week. Believe it or not, I'm not talking about the Derecho that hit northeast South Dakota. While that was impressive, this was in a different way. If you live in Mitchell or were in the city on Wednesday, did you notice anything a bit different. There was a thunderstorm that moved through that was a bit strong, but something happened right after the storm that caught me off guard.

I did notice that the high on that day was a bit higher than I expected. When I looked on the National Weather Service site yesterday, I noticed a story about a heat burst. It caught my attention and I began reading. In just the span of about 15 minutes, right after a thunderstorm, the temperature jumped from 68 to 96. That's nearly two degrees a minute. After the peak temperature of 96 it dropped to 77 in about another 15 minutes. I wish I would have been there to experience this. One minute you're comfortable, the next you're sweating and then you're cold because you're wet and its in the 70s.

This temperature rise was accompanied with a big drop in dew points and relatively big drop in pressure. They both recovered quick as the temperatures returned to normal. From these three points the National Weather Service was able to conclude that this was in-fact a Heat Burst, something I had never heard of. So I'll tell you what I learned from this article.

Air from 10,000 to 20,000 feet rushed to the surface behind the storm. While typically air that comes to the surface in this fashion, overnight and early morning thunderstorms can create these heat bursts which rise the temperatures and drop the dew points. Because the air is so dry, no rain is associated with the phenomena, but it could create very damaging wind.

A few days ago I said "Mother Nature is trying to throw everything at us this week. With severe weather, tornadic storms, a heat burst, a derecho, and a bit of a heat wave for the weekend we've seen it all. If we get a blizzard and a wind chill warning then things would be complete. Thankfully, winter is still far away.