Tonight I had the house to myself. Alaina was out with friends and Rob was in Florida. We had a good rainstorm with a bit of thunder this morning (I'm sure that it FINALLY rained because I decided to get up and water) and then it got pretty hot and humid this afternoon. If you have lived in the Midwest long enough you know that can brew up some good potential thunderstorms.
I had just gotten home from a nice relaxing pedicure (have to make sure my piggies look good for the trip out to Utah) and settled down in front of the TV with an egg salad sandwich and a strawberry smoothie to watch the Cubs game. I was still hunting for the game when the satellite signal was lost. I figured that was a sign that I needed to go start packing when I realized that suddenly it was VERY DARK outside. It was only 6:45, so it shouldn't have been THAT dark. I went to the back door to see what the weather was doing and saw the most amazing sight!
The sky was black and the wind was very loud and deep and solid sounding. I looked up and saw what almost could have been a cumulous cloud except it wasn't white and puffy, it was long and circular and I could see it starting to spin! I was SOOO excited! Was this the beginning of a tornado? I went to get my phone so I could get a video of the cloud because it was moving away from me very quickly but just as I grabbed it out of my purse Alaina sent me a text saying that they were in the basement at Connor's and I should get down to ours. My kids do such a good job taking care of me. I was really torn because I wanted to get a video of that cloud - just think cool it would have been if I could have posted that! But I grabbed the phone (and my laptop so I could track the storm) and went downstairs. The big storm moved through our area quickly and we were left with intermittent thunder and lightning and heavy rain.
Now I don't believe I was actually in or even near a tornado, but I definitely saw circular cloud formation and I've seen Twister enough times to know what that means.
I just turned on the 10:00 news to see what the final result of this storm was. There have been no confirmed tornadoes but lots and lots of wind damage (between 60 and 70 mph) in surrounding suburbs.
O'Hare actually removed all of their passengers and employees from the terminals and moved them to the baggage claim area as the storm moved through that area. I'm SO glad we weren't traveling tonight. Can you imagine the lines and delays as they had to rescreen everyone and make sure none of their equipment was damaged.
Wrigley Field was evacuated when the storm moved through that area and after a three hour rain delay, play has resumed. They didn't say where the fans went when the sirens went off in Wrigleyville.
There were multiple tornado warnings throughout Chicagoland tonight and fortunately, there don't seem to be any injuries which is really amazing considering how large this storm ended up being. I am so grateful that we live in a newer subdivision because that means we have power tonight (which means we have air conditioning and a working sump pump).
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