Carol’s apartment is a block from the Lake Forest City Hall where a siren is sounded briefly each noon. At around 5:45 P.M. Tuesday it sounded and kept sounding. That this was for real we already knew because Carol had been watching the national evening news on television and the local station had broken in a few minutes earlier to announce a tornado warning. Tornados had been observed west of Chicago on radar and visually.
The Chicago metropolitan area is huge, one of the biggest in the world, stretching from northern Indiana to southern Wisconsin and tens of miles west and south of Lake Michigan. Ten million people live here, slightly less than a quarter of them in the city of Chicago itself.
The National Weather Service now states that eleven tornados touched down in the Chicago area Tuesday evening, one at O’Hare Airport, Three were class 1 storms, with winds up to 110 mph, the other eight were class 0 on a scale of 0 to 5, with winds from 65 to 85 mph. These are considered weak tornados and caused no reported human injuries or fatalities. They did rip roofs and sidings from buildings and toppled numerous large trees. More than I would have expected.
None of the tornados came close to Lake Forest. Here we only had a brief episode of heavy rain and wind which whipped the branches of the maple trees outside Carol’s windows as storms do the live oaks outside our condo in Hilton Head.
We had a tornado alert last evening, but as far as I know none developed. An alert is that tornados are possible. A warning that one or more has been seen and its approach is imminent.
You may recall that I experienced a tornado warning in Hilton Head a few weeks ago. On radar that one was heading directly for the marina and our building, but dissipated over the mainland.
Vermont is flooded. The southwest and south are experiencing prolonged dangerous heat. So is Hilton Head, but that is normal for the island in July and August.
This country has a severe climate which seems likely to get worse.
No comments:
Post a Comment