Results tagged “storms”

      

Yesterday's storms were impressive, both visually and statistically. Besides the impressive display for the eyes, the storms smashed the city's single-day rain record for June 19 with 3.97 inches of rain falling at O'Hare, also good enough for the third wettest June day ever and the city's twelfth wettest day ever overall. Of course, that was just at O'Hare. As WGN Weather reports, well over 4.5 inches of rain fell on the Northwest Side.

       

A follow-up to our first post of stormy weather pics from this morning's storms.

This weekend’s weather is wreaking havoc all over the place. More than 100 flights at O’Hare were cancelled due to the weather. Delays averaged more than two hours yesterday. As of this morning, the Aviation Department had not reported any delays for today.

During their peak, Monday's storms produced 800 strikes per minute (!!!) and all-told produced 90,000 strikes across Northern Illinois. Ron Holle, meteorologist at the National Lightning Detection Network, says the 10,000 strikes recorded within a 10-mile of radius, "...comes out to probably half of the whole year's lightning in that area." And what say Skilling? "There was no precedent for this. In every way imaginable, that storm last night was in its own league." Fire departments across the area blamed the lightning for starting dozens of fires.

Chicago Weather Godfather Tom Skilling confirmed that Monday evening's intense storms spawned three tornadoes that produced damage across the Chicago metro area. According to Skilling, Griffith, Indiana was hit by an Enhanced Fujita scale-2 tornado (winds 111-135 m.p.h.) while both Bloomingdale and Bolingbrook were hit by EF1 tornadoes. In addition to the twisters, nearly 2.5 inches of rain fell at O'Hare, already making this the wettest meteorological summer in fifteen years.

Bad news for those ComEd customers left without power after last night's storms: restoring power may take several days. According to ComEd executive vice president Anne Pramaggiore, "Given the magnitude of the damage ... we do expect this to be a multiday restoration effort." Ouch. According to ComEd, as of 11 a.m., over 220,000 customers were still without power, roughly half of those in Chicago. Almost half a million customers experienced outages since the storms hit.

Last night's powerful storms knocked out power across the area and forced the evacuation of 11 patients from Centegra Specialty Hospital in Woodstock, which houses "skilled-nursing, hospice and behaviorial-health patients." High winds downed power lines in the northwest suburb and the patients were evacuated to two nearby hospitals: Centegra Hospital and Centegra Hospital, McHenry campus. Power was restored to Centegra Specialty Hospital two hours later. There were no injuries reported and the patients will return to the hospital later today.

• Turning bad to good, the parents of NIU shooting victim Daniel Parmenter planted an oak tree in his memory at the Elmhurst baseball park where he spent his youth. They’ve also created a scholarship to help children attend baseball or umpire training camps.
• Nine of the 17 Chicago victims of tomato-linked salmonella poisoning have been linked to one restaurant. 29 cases have been reported in Illinois, and there are now 23 states dealing with the epidemic. The Department of Public Health is not naming the restaurant at this time, but says the restaurant was shut down for 48 hours.
• In other infectious disease news, last weekend, we told you about the hotel hot tub that linked two people with Legionnaire’s disease. Well this weekend a third person has been linked to the same hot tub.
• Eight people have been killed in and around the city this weekend. The Trib has the tally.
• More rain came today. Flooding continues to rise in the north suburbs. And Iowans are now beginning to refer to their circumstance as “Our Katrina.”

This morning's storms seem to have hit Chicagoland the hardest, between the hours of 6 a.m. and 8 a.m. More than 99,000 customers in the city, north suburbs, south suburbs and west suburbs are without power. While the day has been beautiful since then, the area is again under a thunderstorm warning.