Is derecho a new term to you?

      It is to me. It is also an example of the power of words, and the genius of somebody in the media to promote a word that takes off in use. It is also an example of the power of marketing and propaganda. That includes selling news for profit.

            And I have a better than average weather background and training.

            By the way, to me a derecho is a windstorm generated by a local line of thunderstorms, an event most everyone has gone through, though the term is new to me, and most I suspect. I had to "research" it.

            Maybe the Spanish origins of the word had something to do with the word's quick adoption by the general public?

            Here locally it was exciting...like what I used to call a thunderstorm. There were many falling tree branches that even killed two people about 150 miles from here. To hear tree branches breaking and trees breaking is an attention gainer, and scary to boot.

            So whatever term you want to use, be careful when the branches are coming down around your head.

            In the meantime, I don't think I was being "superseded". Rather someone else was trying to exploit a lot of us, including me, by using a new word about a typical scary weather event.

            Even "experts" at global warming trying to exploit this latest weather event (again two people died that I know of), like politicians and bureaucrats, usually can't distinguish between the sources, like the sun, or humans.  Anybody heard of the Little Ice Age, for example.

            Meanwhile, I'll just cut up with a chain saw, and pick up, all the fallen debris. I figure I have about a two hour job where I live in east Tennessee.