First a Blizzard, Now This?

February's blizzard was something else, with the entire downtown commuting population trying to evacuate the city ahead of a historic blizzard. Two feet of snow in 24 hours, roads shutting down, people getting stuck in their vehicles overnight trying to drive home on Lakeshore . . . it was a mess. But that seems to be only one of the interesting weather experiences I'll have while here in Chicago.

Chalk another crazy weather experience up for John in Illinois this week! Last night, a severe storm came through and although it didn't last for very long, it sure packed a punch. Around 7:45 last night, I started seeing lots of lightning. All evening, the Elmhurst tornado sirens were blaring intermittently. Here's a view from our apartment window, looking south, straight at the ensuing onslaught. (There's a really good one at about 19 seconds).

I really wish that I had videos of the red and green lightning that was going on. I have never seen anything like that before.

At the same time that all this lightning was going on, the wind started picking up hard. The wind even buckled the window as I was filming another video that didn't turn out. I pulled my little garden inside so that it wouldn't get knocked over. Good thing I did, because within 30 minutes, there were trees uprooted all over town, half of Elmhurts' power got knocked out along with around 250,000 other Chicagoans' (my power only just came on about two hours ago), and the underpass near our apartment was flooded. It was absolutely nuts! Water was pouring in from the windows (the same windows that let all those stupid ladybugs in last fall) and I was having a blast.

Fortunately, there were no tornadoes here, but I heard two touched down in the area last night. Damage around town is pretty bad. Lots of trees or sections of trees went down on lawns, roads, and in some cases houses, garages, and cars. I saw a man in our congregation tonight as we helped clean up the church grounds - his car was totaled by a fallen tree last night. He says he's fortunate because the tree didn't hit his house. I agree.

In any case, what a storm! I'm ok, Ashley's out of town, so she's ok but didn't get to experience it (I'll be she's kind of glad), and life is getting back to "normal" . . . except I have no idea what I'm going to have for breakfast tomorrow now that our milk is rancid because the power was out for so long . . .