Jaw Dropping no warning wind damage at my house.. pics inc

[Pebbles]

This morning ranked up in 2nd place for most scared I've ever been in a storm. We had storms a couple weeks ago that were pretty bad because they were long and pretty fierce. These were worse because the damage was indeed pretty jaw dropping even though the storm was fairly quick. (Only wish I had managed to grab pictures of the neighbors faces as they came out of thier houses)

Hubby came home from work shortly before 5am. Mentioned there was a storm coming but maybe it would miss us. I jump on nws radar really quick. Little quick line of storms with no severe warning. Move 3 year old to our bed as she always wakes up scared. 7 year old booked in there first thunder we could hear. They both fell right back to sleep since their dad was with them.

About 5 minutes into the storm I call the hubby out of bed. The wind was seriously concerning me as the huge trees in our back yard were really moving and the lightening (purple lightening? anyone explain) was so bad it actually hurt the eyes. We stand staring for a while in amazement when suddenly a sheet of white hail hit. It wasn't huge hail but it was so thick we couldn't see more then two inches out the windows. We noticed how fast the windows actually frosted up... all of them... When there was a huge crashed that sounded like our kitchen window had shattered in at the same time the lights went out!

No joke it scared the heckola out of all of us. 14 year old daughter comes tearing out of her room screaming.. me and the hubby snatched the other 2 kids out of our bed and throw them all over by our crawl space (mind you this is in the dark!) as we could hear the storm roaring and trees crashing outside. I hear the husband stumbling around in the kitchen and I was worried he was going to cut he's feet on what we thought was broken glass but he call back that somehow the window didn't break. It's one of those double paned windows you can pull down to clean and it somehow the wind had blown in the window (maybe someone upstairs wanted us to clean it? LOL ). The crashing was it hitting the faucet and knocking over everything on the back of the sink (soaps and stuff).

The storm was easing up a tad but we were concerned looking out the patio door because the sky was like a broiling cauldrin all spinning around with lots of scut. Then we looked out at the front of the house.... and were shocked... trees down everywhere. You could barely see the road. I threw on jeans and ran over to the elderly couple next door even though the lightening was still bad as their tree was down in front of the house (they were ok). One by one people everyone came out of their houses and we all just gaped in disbelief. our block looked like a war zone. Tree's on cars... huge trees everywhere with their roots out of the ground. Tree fell on the power lines behind my house and onto our shed (we later learned it was the cause of why our block went without power for 13 hours) but somehow none of the trees landed directly on any house. Caught gutters and demolished cars but not completely through a roof that we can see. Though I heard a few miles due north of us there was a house that lost it's roof.

NWS Storm reports: We live 1 block due south of this first storm report intersection

1020 UNK NEW LENOX WILL IL 4152 8798 FROM INTERSECTION OF FRANCIS RD AND CEDAR RD AND AREAS WEST OF THERE, MULTIPLE TREES DOWN. SOME TREES ACROSS FRANCIS RD. (LOT)

1020 75 NEW LENOX WILL IL 4152 8798 (LOT)

Pictures will be up shortly

[JonathanBelles]

WOW!!! I would have been scared too. The frosted windows would have been neat to see. I hope everything is ok.

[craptacular]

Glad to hear you are OK. I'm anxiously awaiting the rain up here ... hopefully you won't get a repeat tonight.

[tropicana]

ive seen purple lightning already too, its scary, I think its caused by electrical arcing (sp) when lightning hits objects on the ground, the electrical pulses last longer and tend to linger.

but that experience today absolutely sounds terrifying. Glad you all are ok though.

-justin-

[Pebbles]

I'm so sad as the best photos didn't come out. (The storm ended at dawn and I think it was still too dark for the disposable camera I snatched to take these). These photos that did come out are from several hours later after MOST of the cleanup had already been done Will see if any neighbors have photos from before cleanup began as these do absolutely no justice to the what we saw immediately after the storm.

This is from the house on the corner. You originally couldn't even see there was a car under this tree at first. Funny thing about this was the owner had family visiting from out of state and offered up his carport to the family member. He woke up the next morning to a crushed car.

[Pebbles]

Tried to close this up a little. This is from my driveway. All the way to the left a huge branch crashed down on the red truck smashing in the windshield and tore the gutter off the corner of the house.

In the middle ... in the background it is tough to see ... but a HUGE beautiful evergreen was torn up from it's rootball and fell scraping the side of the house and tearing off the entire gutter and you can not see the entire house behind it.

[Pebbles]

These are the electric company cutting down the tree (that belongs to the owner of the property behind me) off the powerlines and my shed. Now here something to note... they will cut the tree off the wires.. and leave the mess for you to clean up. You can also see where 1 of the kids slides flew across the yard a little.

[craptacular]

Now here something to note... they will cut the tree off the wires.. and leave the mess for you to clean up.

In fairness, their main obligation is to get the power back on and keep everyone safe. I'm not saying it doesn't suck for you to clean up the mess, but I'm guessing people would rather have functional, safe power lines quickly and worry about the mess later.

[Pebbles]

My house and garage was completely covered by leaf litter. It was ground into some of the screens. Took over and hour to hose it all off. (P.S.) there are no trees right next to the back of my house. This was all blown by the wind at least the whole length of my yard.

The second picture is the 7 year old standing next to a stick that was driven into the ground by the winds. We found allot of these.

[CajunMama]

You were so lucky to have not had any damage to your house or yourselves. How scary to have gone through that.

[brunota2003]

WOW! Those are incredible! Glad to hear everyone is safe though!!

[Category 5]

Wow! What a nasty suprise. Glad everyone is safe.

[Pebbles]

Now here something to note... they will cut the tree off the wires.. and leave the mess for you to clean up.

In fairness, their main obligation is to get the power back on and keep everyone safe. I'm not saying it doesn't suck for you to clean up the mess, but I'm guessing people would rather have functional, safe power lines quickly and worry about the mess later.

Yes I agree power was the #1 issue. I had falsely assumed the would haul away the tree too. Just was tossing it out there in case people didn't know. Just at a loss at how to deal with the damage untill I can get up with the owner of that property (it's actually a very small abandoned church) and the tree is still on my fence back there (can't see it in the pics but it did break the fence) and hanging into my yard. I had no idea untill they were done that I would have to figure out how to get the tree out of the back of my yard.

Actually the workers were very nice. They even pulled down a hanging branch from my tree for me when I mention I was worried it would fall on the kids. That they didn't have to do! Really kind of em.

[Category 5]

How high do you think the winds were?

Looks like 60-70mph.

[Beam]

Very strange. I live in Missouri, so I've seen a lot of weird things. Sudden severe winds with no warning? Check. Whirling/churning clouds? You bet. Purple lightning? Hell, I've seen green lightning in one storm. But I have never heard of dozens of sticks being driven vertically into the ground, leaves virtually plastered all over the outside of a house, or hail so thick that it causes frost to develop, all within several minutes. Quite insane, really.

On an unrelated note, your kid is adorable. Looks quite a bit like my niece actually. You're not a long lost sister, right?

[tropicana]

I saw the story on WGN weather segement with Tom Skilling...
best estimates of the worst microbursts he said were between 80-100 mph winds!!

THU JULY 26 2007
Microbursts hit southwest suburbs; 3-5” rains swamp other areas
Sections of two Chicago southwest suburbs—Burr Ridge and Homer Glen—were damaged by powerful microbursts spawned in predawn thunderstorms Thursday. The storms, accompanied by dramatic lightning and loud thunder claps, hit around 5 a.m. Microbursts occur when comparatively dense, rain-cooled air plunges to earth then fans out in all directions, generating strong straight-line winds. National Weather Service survey teams estimated that winds in Homer Glen, which ripped part of a roof off a building, may have reached 100 m.p.h.
Blinding rains with the heaviest storms produced eye-catching totals. New Buffalo, Mich., which was hit by the first in a series of downpour-generating thunderstorms Wednesday night, reported 5.50” of rain, while sections of Knox in Indiana’s Starke County were flooded by 4.76”. Chicago’s southeast side was hit with 4.10”, and Chesterton and Hammond, Ind., tallied 3.46” and 3.39” respectively.
The Fox Valley and areas west of Chicago didn't escape the big rains. Kane County's Elburn reported a whopping 4.22" between 7 a.m. and noon Thursday.

[tigergirl]

Amazing pics!!! That must have been awful to go through!!

[rlltex]

Just proving that no matter where you live you never know what Mother Nature can do. Glad you are all okay!

[alicia-w]

Here's a link that may explain why lightning is varying colors:

http://webexhibits.org/causesofcolor/4.html

I'm glad there was relatively little damage and that everyone is okay.