Severe Weather

A flock of funnel clouds, high winds and torrential rains blitz the Chicago area, uprooting trees, snarling traffic and soaking pedestrians. (CLTV image)
Chicago Tribune

We picked my sister up from school and we're driving through town and I keep hearing something outside. I rolled down my window, heard nothing, rolled it back up. Heard it again, rolled it down again and its the tornado siren. All of a sudden it gets real dark, real quick. I called Dad at work, he was in the tornado shelter and he said to get home quick. We're driving through town and people seemed mostly unconcerned by the siren and the increasing darkness. We had the horn blowing through half the town because people are just acting like nothing is wrong and driving slow, taking their time at stop signs. We were driving down this street near my house and the trees are blowing around like they were about to come down. The windshield got hit by some falling branches. The rain was coming down in sheets where you can't even see a few feet in front of the car. We managed to get in the house, get the dogs in the basement, turn on the TV and called my brother to tell him to stay where he is until the storm passed.

I think we saw most of the worst when we were in the car. And it doesn't appear that it was as bad as it could have been. But I don't think I'd ever seen it like that before, or at least its been a long time. We went from a pretty nice sunny day to black skies in about 20 minutes. Dad said he heard that we did have cloud rotation over our town. I just can't believe how completely oblivious people seemed to be to the whole thing. We've still got some storms rolling through now. I'd hate to see what the Des Plaines river looks like right now. It was high the other day and its rained more since.