Spent the afternoon listening to tornado sirens. We missed the brunt of it and only had brief downpours and moments of sunshine (which the weather people kept saying was a very bad sign). We just had a few limbs down, but it looks like the area where I spent my childhood was hit very hard. There are over 50,000 people without power in the area. I’m pretty sure my old middle school is the one pictured in rubble.
I know there are several Dopers in the Illinois, Indiana, Ohio area and I hope everyone fared as well as we did.
Fort Wayne, Indiana here. We missed the brunt of the storm. We have about 5,000 people without power and trees down. I’ve seen pics on FB from Lafayette, Indiana and there are commercial structures that have been badly damaged. My heart goes out to the families in Illinois where the neighborhood is now flat.
Fort Wayne here as well. I think there’s more wind right now than when the storms came through. At one point they were showing on TV some rotating thunderstorms that were pretty much right over my head. The clouds were swirling and stuff was blowing around in the air. That was kind of scary, but we’re fine.
They reported three deaths in Illinois, and my wife is in Cincinnati on business and had to go to the lowest level of the parking garage for about a half an hour. My daughter is also going to school in Cincinnati and said they had no instructions to take shelter. My guess is that because my wife is in another county (actually another state, but just across the river) that a warning was issued for their county and the hotel wanted to err on the side of caution.
Milwaukee here. The weatherman made it sound like the apocalypse was coming but if I didn’t get a call from someone and I didn’t turn on the TV (and my found didn’t make a noise)…it would have just seemed like some really heavy rainfall with some wind and hail. I’m not sure I would have given another thought beyond 'wow, it’s really raining hard, I wish I had cleaned my gutters".
I think it I caught the edge of it and it moved past me really quickly. I know I heard something about a roof being torn off 10 or 15 miles away but I haven’t turned the news on since it came through 12 hours ago so I have no idea what the (local) aftermath looks like.
Champaign county, Illinois. Three tornadoes touched down here. We only got a little rain, but the system was rotating when it went over us and a nearby town (Gifford) was flattened.
DuPage County. Wife and I saw the wall of rain coming and made it to a Rock Bottom Brewery in Lombard before it hit. The deluge was so intense you couldn’t see more than a few feet.
My sister in Elkhart County personally reported significant wind and rain, no loss of power. She’s POed that she didn’t get to see her BF last night. He’s an electrical lineman, and 50k people were without power in his district.
Cousin in Kokomo reported no damage to their jewelry store, but their bank was destroyed.
Son in Fishers didn’t report anything bad, but I didn’t talk to him long. His GF’s parents were without power on the far east side of Indianapolis last night.
Here’s a map of all the tornadoes. Not sure if it was made by the guy cited in the article (the guy from Twitter) or if he found it on The Weather Channel’s site, but it’s pretty crazy.
We were quietly enjoying our Sunday when everything outside started whipping around like crazy. I said “We need to get in the basement, NOW” My wife went upstairs to get our napping baby and by the time she got back downstairs, it was gone.
5 miles SW from us there were dozens of trees snapped off about 30 feet up and a barn destroyed, so I’m guessing that same thing is what went by us.
We have 6 pallets of steel roofing in our side yard waiting to be installed on our house, somehow the wind moved the material on one pallet enough that it snapped the pallet banding and I found pieces of metal roof in the ditch in front of our house.
West central Indiana, here. I’m just a mile or two on the Indiana side of the Indiana/Illinois state line. We had strong, strong winds, and lots of rain/thunder/lightning, but no tornadoes. When the tornado sirens went off, twice, we went outside to look at the sky. We rednecks usually do that, you know.
Anyway, it was really cool to see it raining on one side of the yard, and a few steps away, the rain was not present. Very neat to experience! The sky was a tumultuous mess, though. Very busy, and swirling in all directions up there.
My husband’s cousin lost his house. He lives southeast of us, a few counties away. They were not injured, but lost everything.
