casual ultimate » midwest monsoon season continues…

with chicago’s first-ever recorded hurricane passing through town last night, things got a little dicey for folks in the chicago area. i have to say, i do like me some severe weather, it’s pretty cool to watch. i mean, if it’s going to knock out my satellite reception, it better offer something in return. there’ve got to be a bunch of stories, good (tbr enjoying a 4wd vehicle) and bad (mercedog losing his roof), but this was my bout with the bad weather.

driving through that hurricane last night was awesome. i left my company’s lincolnshire office at about 3:20pm, just as the first front of the storm approached; i saw it coming and made a beeline to my car to get on the road asap. i -just- made it to the dry confines of the car before the rain started coming down. within a couple minutes, it was like driving through a carwash. the 60+ mph winds power-washed my car with the buckets of rain coming down. once on the freeway, i couldn’t see a damn thing at any speed above 40mph, even with the wipers on high. and it felt like i could start hydroplaning at any moment, there was that much water on the roads. people were stopping under underpasses to wait it out, which i thought was a bad idea because i bet at least a few of them got caught in high water. water was pouring off overpasses like waterfalls. there were lightning strikes all around me, super close on some; using the old “count one second between lightning and thunder equals how many miles away the strike was” rule, there were at least a handful of strikes under a mile away. and the winds had ripped apart the trees along the roads, i’ve never seen that much pulverized tree debris on the freeway.

soon enough though, the first wave of rain stopped, and i settled in for the bumper-to-bumper traffic on the edens trying to get back downtown. i made it back to my river north office in about an hour and a half, actually not bad considering what happened later on with all the flooding and road closures.

i got back to the apartment just as the second round of heavy stuff started coming down, so i sat in the car for a while, hoping to wait it out and not get totally soaked on the 20 yard walk to the front door. not gonna happen. so i changed into my gym clothes, which i had ready in the car since i was supposed to run track last night, and made a mad dash to shelter.

after reading about the extent of the damage and such this morning, and hearing about merce’s roof, i’m feeling pretty lucky about how well we escaped over on my street. fortunately, there weren’t any trees ripped down, and we didn’t get flooded out. but just to be safe, i parked on top of a speed hump, trying to get on high ground as best i can. i’ve had a car get flooded once, and i don’t want it again. that shit stinks.