5-22-11 Storm damage

I took these pictures around the neighborhood this morning on my normal walk with the beagle. We had quite a storm pass through yesterday. Sorry for the blurriness of some of them. I have a new cell phone and I am not used to taking pictures with it yet. It appears that I accidentally deleted several that I took of stuff around the porch. I have not cleaned up yet so I will try to remember to take pictures first and add them to the end of the post.

Yesterday after lunch, Wilma and I went to visit my wife at the rehab place. We stayed until supper time and then I brought Wilma home. As I was getting home, it started to sprinkle. I made myself some supper and while I was eating it, it started to rain quite hard. I got 6 text messages from the weather channel warning of a severe thunderstorm. All six came after the heavy rain started and two came after it had stopped. It only rained hard for maybe 10 minutes, so I took the opportunity to go visit my wife in the rehab place where she is staying. On the way there I received three more severe thunderstorm warning text messages.

While I was there, my wife was watching local weather. The stations are all physically located to the west of town so they saw it first. The weather people on several of the stations went and hid in the basements of the stations as the storm passed over. The worst of it only lasted a few minutes as the storm was moving at 60+ mph. I did not count them up, but while I was there I got at least five more messages of severe thunderstorms and tornado warnings.

The rehab place got all the patients out of their rooms and put them in the hallway when their weather radio indicated a tornado warning. The lights blinked a few times, and there was marble size hail for about 30 seconds, but that was about it.

I left later on and went home. More text messages on the way home including a flash flood warning. On the way I saw a neighborhood adjacent to ours with no power, but our power was still on. There was some small branches down in our yard, and part of a tree blew over across the road in front of the house. Part of the fence belonging to the cemetery next door blew over, as did our decorative windmill. Oddly, a very heavy planter (maybe 40 pounds) full of dirt blew off the porch railing.

I went out with my mag light and looked around. Did not appear to be any serious damage. It had been lightly raining since I left the rehab place and while I was outside it started raining a little heavier so I went inside. Later a police car came and sat in front of our house with his lights on by the downed tree. He did not stay long. A ComEd truck and a fire truck were also out there for a short time.

I was awakened at 3:55 this morning by an explosion outside my bedroom window. The power went out so I guess the explosion was related to the power lines running by the house. I went and got my cell phone and set the alarm on it for 4:30 and went back to sleep. The cell phone only allows a snooze time of 5 minutes. My clock radio allows 7 minutes. It seems like a big difference somehow.

Anyway we got up eventually and went for our walk. I took some pictures of the storm damage along the way. Lots of small branches down, a few big limbs, and some good size trees that blew over down the street, along with the one across the street from us. I couldn't make breakfast due to the lack of power. Had to unhook the garage door to open it up - no power for the garage door opener. Stopped at McDonalds on the way to get a couple biscuit and sausage sandwiches. They were quite busy. I guess lots of people were stopping to get breakfast there due to lack of power.

At Logli supermarket.

These are from in front of our house.

Look close and you can see a wire in there.

The fence in our side yard. the fence belongs to someone else.

E.T.A.
I took these after I got home today. These first photos are of the tree still in the road in front of the house.

Note the electric wire under the fallen tree going to the house across the street. I wonder if he has power. It's laying on the ground part way.

The windmill blew over.

This planter full of dirt blew off the railing on our front porch.

[added - these pix were taken on our morning walk of 5-24-11. Wilma selected a different route this morning, so these pictures are from another area in the neighborhood.]

I took this in the evening of 5-24-11. This is the tree that was in the road in front of our house. Someone has cut up the part that was in the road and moved it off the road.