Tornado aftermath, part 2
Now that things have calmed down a bit, I wanted to go over a few things I forgot last night, especially now that I got a little more sleep.
--One thing that got mentioned, specifically on Channel 9, was how people's phones were going off with the alert about the tornado warnings. So many people had their phones on and heard them go off; Robin Baumgarten mentioned she was asleep, but she heard her phone, and that's what alerted her to the bad weather. As a morning news anchor, of course she'd be asleep at 11 o'clock at night. My mom had on Bravo and her TV gave the emergency warning tone. Because I had on Channel 5, and they were actively showing the situation, I wonder if they didn't run the alert, because I did *not* hear one and likely would have fallen asleep entirely had Brant Miller not come on the air when he did. I would have been okay this time around, but had I been in Naperville? It could've been bad. But this is part of what people are attributing no fatalities to, because people got the warnings and for the most part were able to get to shelter in time.
--Naperville and Woodridge were the two places that suffered the worse damage, though Darien and Burr Ridge also were affected. At its worse, it was an EF3 tornado. It appears to have followed 75th Street east, starting around Naper Boulevard. It eased up after it crossed I-355, so the worst damage I've seen reported was in that range, and north of 87th Street. I did meet someone today who was on the west end of the tornado, basically where it started, and their home was okay; their damage was confined to their yard, and mature trees came down, but that was about it.
--The Woodridge portion of the damage freaked me out a bit. Back in the day, when I was working in the instrument repair shop of a music store, I would bring instruments to a guy who'd formerly worked in the shop, but by that point was working out of his house--in Woodridge. He moved not long after I started doing that, but I went to his house frequently, and I began to apprentice under him for a time. His former house was right near some of the worst of that town's damage; if it wasn't hit, it was immediately south of everything. He's no longer in the state, so he's fine in all this, but it was really freaky to realize I may have visited one of those houses that got damaged. It's been almost 20 years so I no longer remember the address, but it was only a few blocks west of St. Scholastica, which backs up to Janes. That's sort of the epicenter street for what happened in Woodridge. There's a house near there where the garage lost its roof. The adjacent parking lot had this red item overturned against a tree or a pole; at first, it looked like it possibly was a truck, but then I realized it was a trailer; it still looked like a toy that a child tossed in a fit of pique. And nearby, there was this pile of...well, everything, like the tornado had gathered everybody's stuff and simply dropped it in someone's yard. Bizarre.
--Also bizarre: I don't recall if I mentioned it yesterday, but I looked up the house that got obliterated in Naperville on Google Maps, so I know what it was supposed to look like. So unbelievable to think that it was there Sunday morning and gone Sunday night. The next-door neighbor said to the news, their kitchen is in my pool. Like...how does that happen? The power of nature. The wind was so strong that it picked up heavy objects like nothing and tossed them around; someone posted the video from their Ring camera set up in the backyard, and their basketball hoop flies across the back patio like it's made of plastic, not metal.
The National Weather Service has a post dedicated to the Father's Day tornado, which they keep updating. They show one area of wind damage as to the west of me, which is why we got put under a tornado warning despite the really bad cell being south and east of us. That ended up being straight line winds, from Kaneville to North Aurora. There was also a weak tornado in Plainfield, south and west of the larger one, plus one in Northwest Indiana, not that far from camp, actually. It started farther west and ended up going north, but in the lower right part of their graphic, you can see Moss Lake, that's how close it came.
Their summary of the Naperville-Woodridge tornado:
Summary:
The approximate starting location of the tornado was near Plainfield-Naperville Road and Sheppey Court at about 11:05 PM. Sporadic wind damage was found both west and east of this point before the path became more concentrated and continuous east of Modaff Road. The tornado gradually intensified as it tracked east and especially east of Naper Boulevard where damage to homes became common. The tornado reached peak intensity in the area around Princeton Circle in Naperville where a house completely collapsed and multiple nearby homes also sustained considerable damage to their roof and walls. From that location the tornado continued east across the Greene Valley Forest Preserve into Woodridge. Another area of concentrated damage occurred between Woodridge Drive and Basswood Lane in Woodridge where numerous homes lost several walls and apartment buildings lost large portions of roofing material. The tornado continued east-southeastward producing primarily tree damage from Lemont Road into southern Darien, across Interstate 55, and southern Burr Ridge. The damage path became narrow as it crossed the Des Plaines river into Willow Springs, after which point the tornado dissipated near Buffalo Woods at approximately 11:25 PM CDT. In total, around 230 homes sustained damage from the tornado with the most significant damage in Naperville and Woodridge, and at least 11 people required medical treatment.
More social media:
Thread from Mike Lorber (traffic reporter from Channel 5--he was on the phone calling in police scanner reports Sunday night)
Thread from Bronagh Tumulty (reporter from Channel 9--pictures and blurbs from Woodridge, including the Bridget mentioned in my previous entry)
Video from WGN--shows the area near St. Scholastica mentioned above
Story and video from Channel 5--shows before and after pictures of the home on Princeton Circle that got obliterated, plus a video report
One picture I saw, I think on Channel 9, that I haven't come across again was of a trampoline in a tree, which also had pieces of aluminum siding sort of wrapped around its limbs. It's really incredible what nature can do.
--One thing that got mentioned, specifically on Channel 9, was how people's phones were going off with the alert about the tornado warnings. So many people had their phones on and heard them go off; Robin Baumgarten mentioned she was asleep, but she heard her phone, and that's what alerted her to the bad weather. As a morning news anchor, of course she'd be asleep at 11 o'clock at night. My mom had on Bravo and her TV gave the emergency warning tone. Because I had on Channel 5, and they were actively showing the situation, I wonder if they didn't run the alert, because I did *not* hear one and likely would have fallen asleep entirely had Brant Miller not come on the air when he did. I would have been okay this time around, but had I been in Naperville? It could've been bad. But this is part of what people are attributing no fatalities to, because people got the warnings and for the most part were able to get to shelter in time.
--Naperville and Woodridge were the two places that suffered the worse damage, though Darien and Burr Ridge also were affected. At its worse, it was an EF3 tornado. It appears to have followed 75th Street east, starting around Naper Boulevard. It eased up after it crossed I-355, so the worst damage I've seen reported was in that range, and north of 87th Street. I did meet someone today who was on the west end of the tornado, basically where it started, and their home was okay; their damage was confined to their yard, and mature trees came down, but that was about it.
--The Woodridge portion of the damage freaked me out a bit. Back in the day, when I was working in the instrument repair shop of a music store, I would bring instruments to a guy who'd formerly worked in the shop, but by that point was working out of his house--in Woodridge. He moved not long after I started doing that, but I went to his house frequently, and I began to apprentice under him for a time. His former house was right near some of the worst of that town's damage; if it wasn't hit, it was immediately south of everything. He's no longer in the state, so he's fine in all this, but it was really freaky to realize I may have visited one of those houses that got damaged. It's been almost 20 years so I no longer remember the address, but it was only a few blocks west of St. Scholastica, which backs up to Janes. That's sort of the epicenter street for what happened in Woodridge. There's a house near there where the garage lost its roof. The adjacent parking lot had this red item overturned against a tree or a pole; at first, it looked like it possibly was a truck, but then I realized it was a trailer; it still looked like a toy that a child tossed in a fit of pique. And nearby, there was this pile of...well, everything, like the tornado had gathered everybody's stuff and simply dropped it in someone's yard. Bizarre.
--Also bizarre: I don't recall if I mentioned it yesterday, but I looked up the house that got obliterated in Naperville on Google Maps, so I know what it was supposed to look like. So unbelievable to think that it was there Sunday morning and gone Sunday night. The next-door neighbor said to the news, their kitchen is in my pool. Like...how does that happen? The power of nature. The wind was so strong that it picked up heavy objects like nothing and tossed them around; someone posted the video from their Ring camera set up in the backyard, and their basketball hoop flies across the back patio like it's made of plastic, not metal.
The National Weather Service has a post dedicated to the Father's Day tornado, which they keep updating. They show one area of wind damage as to the west of me, which is why we got put under a tornado warning despite the really bad cell being south and east of us. That ended up being straight line winds, from Kaneville to North Aurora. There was also a weak tornado in Plainfield, south and west of the larger one, plus one in Northwest Indiana, not that far from camp, actually. It started farther west and ended up going north, but in the lower right part of their graphic, you can see Moss Lake, that's how close it came.
Their summary of the Naperville-Woodridge tornado:
Summary:
The approximate starting location of the tornado was near Plainfield-Naperville Road and Sheppey Court at about 11:05 PM. Sporadic wind damage was found both west and east of this point before the path became more concentrated and continuous east of Modaff Road. The tornado gradually intensified as it tracked east and especially east of Naper Boulevard where damage to homes became common. The tornado reached peak intensity in the area around Princeton Circle in Naperville where a house completely collapsed and multiple nearby homes also sustained considerable damage to their roof and walls. From that location the tornado continued east across the Greene Valley Forest Preserve into Woodridge. Another area of concentrated damage occurred between Woodridge Drive and Basswood Lane in Woodridge where numerous homes lost several walls and apartment buildings lost large portions of roofing material. The tornado continued east-southeastward producing primarily tree damage from Lemont Road into southern Darien, across Interstate 55, and southern Burr Ridge. The damage path became narrow as it crossed the Des Plaines river into Willow Springs, after which point the tornado dissipated near Buffalo Woods at approximately 11:25 PM CDT. In total, around 230 homes sustained damage from the tornado with the most significant damage in Naperville and Woodridge, and at least 11 people required medical treatment.
More social media:
Thread from Mike Lorber (traffic reporter from Channel 5--he was on the phone calling in police scanner reports Sunday night)
Thread from Bronagh Tumulty (reporter from Channel 9--pictures and blurbs from Woodridge, including the Bridget mentioned in my previous entry)
Video from WGN--shows the area near St. Scholastica mentioned above
Story and video from Channel 5--shows before and after pictures of the home on Princeton Circle that got obliterated, plus a video report
One picture I saw, I think on Channel 9, that I haven't come across again was of a trampoline in a tree, which also had pieces of aluminum siding sort of wrapped around its limbs. It's really incredible what nature can do.