Hold On To Your Hats

If you don't already feel like you have been violated by the wind today, just wait, there is more. This is a "winter-intensity, large-scale storm in a hot, humid, energy-rich summer environment" (Skilling's words not ours, and we found him to be pretty accurate). Overnight we could see winds in the area of 90 mph, which according to the Fujita scale that Bill Paxton taught us about, that is the same as an F1 tornado. We live in the "Windy City" (we know that it has all sorts of meanings aside from meteorological ones), but c'mon this is still pretty powerful. Hot summer wind doesn't normally cause flight delays and damage property.

Already, there have been over 300 flights canceled, and by 4 p.m., City crews had already encountered 570 reports of trees in the public way, 52 traffic lights out, 57 downed power lines and 33 reports of light pole damage. The hot wind as we've affectionately dubbed it (hands off on naming a band that, we called it first) even scared the crap out of some school children when roof scaffolding started blowing away at Rosario Castellanos Middle School.

So if you are one of the 17,300 ComEd customers whose lights are flickering you should walk outside and curse the 13th century Japanese wind god, Fujin (see photo). But put some bricks in your pockets first, we don't want you to miss the party tonight.

Hey look, cows.