Tornado Alley

On Tuesday, June 21st we had one of the worst storms come through our neighborhood. In the matter of minutes, the outdoors turned black, a flash of lightening and no power. We went from playing on the floor with Addison (trying to get her to turn over) to scurrying to put her to bed, in the dark. Let me tell you, if you have ever tried to swaddle a baby in the light, it is 100 times harder in the pitch black darkness of a storm.

The lightening and thunder and SUPER heavy rain only lasted for about 10 minutes but after losing power less than 1 minute into the storm, it seemed like much longer. For a 10 minute storm, the damage was horrendous, especially in our neighborhood.

Luckily, as usual, our neighbor quickly shared power with us through his generator so we could plug in one light and the fridge. CJ went out to survey the damage. He said it was bad but with it being so dark out, it was hard to tell.

The next morning, this is the damage we woke up to:

Come to find out, a mild level one tornado had some through Downer's Grove, hence all the damage. Power lines down everywhere, LARGE mature trees broken in half, limbs all over the place, and 3 lines down in our backyard. Luckily, from what we could tell, no trees fell on any houses or cars in our neighborhood however, others were not so lucky.

Here is a video of a tree down on a car from the storm:




All in all, ComEd, our power company had power back on VERY quickly. By the time we came home from work on Wednesday, the power was back on. Crazy storm and boy was a happy that I was not home alone this time.