Two or so weeks ago, there was a very unhappy raincloud that decided to hover above Chicagoland and partner up with his Windy friend to see who could cause the most destruction. Here's some radar images to prove, if you are a weather nerd then you'd understand the dangers of phrases such as "bow echo", "shelf cloud", and very low pressure. Sorry, I had to utilize my knowledge of this easy elective class called "Severe and Hazardous Weather" I took two semesters ago.
As these pictures show, this is not something you'd want to call up your friends and head over to the large field to play soccer, let alone be driving in your car. Actually, it seemed that even being in a building is a bad idea - Two windows on the top floor of Willis Tower got blown out due to strong winds.
You see that yellow rectangle towards the bottom left of the colored radar? That, my friend, is a hook echo, the hallmark of tornado-producing super-cell thunderstorms. Scary stuff, and yes, I said tornado. But not just there- This storm planted several tornados across the radar, two of which just miles away from my house.
So the story goes: Around 3pm on Friday, work at the office has slowed to a trickle, while many of us wait to celebrate one of our co-worker's birthday and scarf on some delicious looking cupcakes, the sky is slowly churning and producing mucky colored clouds, winds blowing 70+ mph, which made the rain seem to pour sideways like if you tilted the Bellagio fountains 90 degrees and extended that across Chicagoland. By the time I head in the train to go home, the sky is filled with a color I've never seen before, so awkward I couldn't really recall it myself. Lighting flashed so bright that you didn't even want to look outside the train windows and the thunder was so loud you can almost claim to have said that an earthquake with a magnitude of 5.0 struck.
By the time I reached the station, CTA workers were warning us to stay inside due to tornado warnings in the area. Rain was blowing inside in all directions, and the wind was so strong that you didn't even want to poke your head outside the door, which even had a 7-foot canopy between the door and the street, because you'd end up with a face full of windy rain and a bad hair day. Since my mom picks me up from the station by the time I usually arrive, she called while on the train there that she was going to stay at work till the storm died down.
"Well that's gonna take forever"
And it did.
I waited nearly two hours before my mom came and got me, which still was raining pretty bad then. During that time, I watched the street in front of the station flood with 8 inches of rain, cars trying to ford the street to pick up their passenger and nearly kill their engine, umbrellas fly away, heard tornado alarms, and buses stop running (My train line eventually stopped running for several hours due to weather).
The ride home was pretty weird, downed trees everywhere, sad old, thick, branches laying parallel to the ground like the Jolly Green Giant went crazy stampeded through our neighborhood, power lines in the middle of the road, powerless street and traffic lights, and flooded streets everywhere.
I was almost certain that no one had power in our neighborhood.
But we were one of the only blocks that did.
Here's the driveway to our house. Clearly, the sewers weren't working. Every street basically looked the same, with a few inches more or less of water.
Here's my street.
Here's my street. My brother just purchased an inflatable kayak a few days before, and I was so tempted to go out and use this. But it was still lightning out so even standing in this water wasn't the safest idea.
These are my rain boots, which I discovered had holes in them. Right. After. I. Did. This.
That's the street running perpendicular to my house street, which sits a 70+ yr old church. The water engulfed all the way up to the sidewalk.
All my friend's in the area were out of power, and were still out of power for several days. The rest of the night was spent watching television on reports of power outages and storm damages.
Now, the streets are back to normal, power outages fixed, and winds calm. The only traces you can see from the storm are all the missing trees that went flat due to the wind.
She says hi.
Kitty?
Helllllllloooo?
hmmm...
Yup. This is basically all she does. Well, these are the only pictures that will come out - The times when she's sleeping and not jumping frantically, climbing furniture, chasing and pouncing on our feet, and meowing in the morning when I get up for work.
