Yesterday evening Chicago was pelted with monsoon-style rain and ripped by winds gusting as much as 70mph. Trees and branches were downed; streets and basements were flooded. The worst is yet to come:
As communities across the Chicago region wake up to a massive cleanup job from Thursday’s storms that tore roofs from buildings, uprooted trees and snapped off electricity to hundreds of thousands, yet another round of potentially dangerous thunderstorms are expected to blow through today.
The national weather service sent out a flash flood statement for early Friday morning that warns residents of storms capable of producing heavy rainfall amounts, in some areas up to 2 inches per hour. Those totals, along with nearly 3 to 6 inches that has fallen since Thursday afternoon, could produce runoff that leads to dangerous flash flooding.
“There’s an 80 percent chance this afternoon and evening of some rain but exactly where and how severe, it’s hard to tell until it starts to happen,” National Weather Service meteorologist Jim Allsopp said.
Now the ground is soaked and the additional rain with nowhere else to go is even more likely to flood homes and businesses. With the rain-soaked ground winds as high as those of last night could well uproot trees.
Believe me, taking dogs out to eliminate when everywhere you look there’s two to three inches of water is a real treat.
Oh shoot…am I supposed to resond:
“ha ha ha ha”
or
“riiiiiight!”
(If you are not making the Bill Cosby reference I apologize.)
🙂