Holy hell what an afternoon!
For those that haven't heard, storms literally blew into the Chicago area and surrounding suburbs. First round was this afternoon, the other hit after 9:00 pm. The skies literally went from bright and sunny to dark and omnimus within a matter of minutes.
Working 28 stories up on Michigan Avenue has its vantage points at times. Today it was just scary as hell! We watched the clouds roll in. Not very dark at first and then in a blink of an eye, it was midnight. The wind kicked into high gear, slamming into our windows so hard you could see them vibrating from across the office. Rains followed and it looked like a total dust storm, blowing in sheets.
Next to our building is currently a construction site. They tore down the previous building to make way for bigger and better. Well, it sure would have been nice if they secured the crane! In height, I would say it's a good 30+ stories. It was swinging and swaying like it was a child's toy. Literally swinging itself into a full 360. We were all running out of the offices whenever the hook came close. You swore it was just going to bust through our windows.
Lightening hit the top of Trump Towers several times. Willis Tower, better and forever known as the Sears Tower, had windows blow out of it! Wind gusts in downtown Chicago were 77 mph.
In the lil' suburb I live in, it hit 75 mph. We lost power for about 3 hours. My friend in the city is one of 350 in his area still without power. Or should I say partial power aka brown out. There's three legs on the transformer in his area; two of them are blown. This is affecting literally just his block. The people across the street and across the alley have full power. His block? Very little. So anything requiring real electricity like stoves, air conditioners, washers, etc., are utterly useless. But if you have anything that requires low energy or if you're using energy efficient lightbulbs you have a little something. So in short, he can charge his cell phone in his lit kitchen while he calls Com Ed to find out they have no clue when full power will be restored. Thankfully they took the real high heat and humidity out of the forecast so he should be okay.
Gotta love Mother Nature sometimes proving you ain't shit! LOL