Weather Stories
by: Jonathan Friend
I've been through some really cool weather situations in my life time. Some dangerous some more peaceful. I've seen weather in 37 states and Ontario, Canada. I've seen all kinds of weather extremes, anywhere from blizzards to a waterspout. I promise you there not boring!
Near Tornado? Maybe!
This is a story of the worst storm I was ever in while in the car. It takes place in Northwestern Pennsylvania in the summer of 1990. Me and my family were driving towards Erie after visiting relatives in Harrisburg. It was about two o'clock in the afternoon and we had just stopped at an antique store and we were now two hours away from Erie. At about 2:30, quarter to three it got really dark to the west. And we just thought it was going to be a shower, nothing big.Well the storm kept on getting higher as it came towards us. At about three it was pouring down rain so hard we couldn't see ten feet. We parked along side the road with many other cars. The lightning had picked up in intensity as the wind got stronger. There was lightning striking down in the fields next to us. Then one of those bolts hit a high transmission line and caused it to fall to the ground and start a fire not more than fifty feet away. Then hail the size of quarters came raining down along with wind gusts that picked are car up four inches on one side and set us back down. Then the storm abruptly ended about five minutes later. We saw tree limbs down all over along with roofing and power poles.
After that my ears were ringing so bad because of the heavy rain, hail and thunder. I've never been in a storm that intense before and up till now.
Tornado touchdown in Zion
This story takes place in my home town of Beach Park, Kenosha, and over in Zion in April of 1996. It was a Friday and school had just let out for the day. The day was hot and humid with temperatures in the low 90's with a stiff wind. Severe storms were in the forecast for that day and the over night hours, but nothing was going on at the time. I was looking forward to a good that day. Well that evening I went to spend the night at my Grandma's house in Kenosha. After dinner and a shower I was watching the news on channel 9WGN. I saw on the radar a storm coming eastbound from Rockford, IL towards the north shore. At the time the storm wasn't severe. I thought to myself what a bummer, I wanted to see a storm before I had to wait again for the next chance. I went to sleep about five minutes later not expecting a major storm. Well I was just starting to fall asleep at around 11:15pm when I heard thunder a little ways off, then I heard it again but much closer. Then I heard a really load noise like a frieght trian coming and then I jumped up from laying down to see a hail the size of quarters coming in from the west. Once it got to the house it was ear piercing. With the thunder and hail and the lightning flashing it was kind of scary. The wind picked up and started ripping leaves and branches out of the trees. Then I heard a very loud crack of thunder and a bright flash from the street. I looked out and saw two halfs of a tree laying in the middle of the road. The storm then quit and the stars came out, just after 10 minutes of the storm. My grandma and me thought what a storm, but that wasn't all the damage.
The next morning I headed home fifteen minutes away. As we got closer to home I could see debris from the trees, trash can were all over, along with pieces of roofing. At home my parents told a even more exciting of a story then I had. The storm was worst down here then in Wisconsin. Our house had one or two shingles torn off, then fence shattered and fell, the storm also left piles of hail by the gutters. Some of our gutters were torn off, but that's about it. O my parents said that the winds were so strong that it whipped the front door open. In one part of Zion there was more damage to be seen and a area in Gurnee and Wadsworth. A apartment complex had it's whole roof torn off in one piece and that rood landed about 100 feet away and landed on a bunch of parked cars. Mulitple trees in the area were either uprooted or stripped to a stump. About six homes were destroyed along with telephone polls and high tension lines. To the west of us several homes were severly damaged along with countless trees. Some places in the area recieved hail 2 inches across. At first it looked like straight line winds had done the damage, but a few days latter they rated it a F-2 tornado. With estimated winds between 130mph-140mph. And the happy ending to this story that no one was killed or seriously hurt.
New Years Day Bizzard of 1999
As the last week of December 1998 rolled to an end, there still hadn't been any snow to speak of. I was also looking forward to the beginning of the new year also. But what really caught my attention was on the Weather Channel and all the major news networks, they were predicting a major snow storm at the end of the week. I knew not to count on it, because the situation could change at anytime. By the 30th it had gotten colder and the snow storm was still on for the next night into the next day. Before I went to bed the 30th I was listening to the weather channel talking about how much area this storm was going to carry. For us they predicted between 8-14 inches for the 1st along with cold temperatures and howling winds. The next morning I woke up to a light snow and temperatures around 20 f. The weather forecasters had boosted the accumulations up a few inches along the lake for that night and new years day. The day went on with some light snow coming off the Lake Michigan. The winds were increasing from the east to 30 mph by the end of the day. I stayed up late that night and waited for the really heavy snow to start falling while watching the weather channel and Dick Clark's New Year's Eve special. Shortly after the 1999 began the snow picked up in intensity. I watched for a few minutes and then went to bed.
I woke up the next morning at around 8am to see nothing but snow covering my window. I could hardly see outside. I went to the other end of the house and looked out instead. Everything was covered with snow; the wind was whipping it around and forming bizarre drifts and so forth. I had put a four foot snow pole up in the courtyard next to the kitchen window the day before to measure the snow out and at 9 am it read around eight inches or so. The cable tv was out but the local stations were still up. The local forecast had a blizzard warning, high wind advisory, and a wind chill advisory. The forecasters on WGN were calling for a whopping 15-24 inches of snow for the day with 4 to 8 foot drifts. The day went on into afternoon and I decided to go outside and experience the storm for myself. Once I got there I found three feet of snow in front of the garage. I decided I get a head start shoveling the snow; I worked an hour on it and had to take a break. The wind was blowing the snow in from the northeast at 40 mph and gusts towards 55 mph. Our garage faced west so the snow was piling up in front of the door at a rate of six inches an hour. On the west side of the house there was a drift around four feet high at around 3pm that day. I went in the house for the rest of the day watching the snow and doing a little work here and there. The tv was still out and the internet was down due to the storm. Day turned into night and the depth of the snow had climbed to 18 inches. The wind started to die down but the snow was falling heavily. At about 11 pm the snow started slowing down, but as fast as it started slowing down in started up again. It snowed in near white out conditions till 2am, then the snow was over. I looked out on the back porch and there sat almost two feet of snow. The next morning I got up at 6 am and started shoveling. Nobody else was out but the sun was shinning brightly with a cold northwest wind. No cars or nothing had come down our quite street and the snow was unbroken as far as you could see.
Later that day I figured out that we had 21 inches of snow, which was Chicago's second biggest winter storm ever. It took us till the end of the day to shovel out. Then we had piles of snow five and six feet high along with a two drifts five feet deep. It was a storm to remember. The biggest snow storm I may have ever seen. It took the area around a week to get back to normal.
Five Days of Severe Weather; June 1993
Another school year had just ended. I had just got home when a thunderstorm rolled on in. I expected a short storm like they usually are around here. But I was very wrong. For the rest of the day till 7pm it continued to be dark and very rainy with periods of very vivid lightning. After that there was a break. I went to bed and everything was peaceful. In the middle of the night a bigger storm rolled in with hail the size of quarters and torrential rain. After a half an hour of raquet the storm moved on and I was albe to sleep the rest of the night. The next day was alot like the first. A series of storms started up in the afternoon. This time the tornado sirens went off twice due to low hanging funnel clouds. The tornado siren is really close to use so you can really here it good. Thank God no tornadoes made a touchdown in the vicinity. That evening around 7pm I got to see my first funnel cloud spinning above the neighborhood. Although it was high up I still watched it and so did all the neighbors that noticed it. I watched it float on towards the east towards Lake Michigan.
Over the next three days it stormed on a regular basis in the afternoon and at night. Tornado sirens went off two more times. Hail pounded the area multiple times, causing millions of dollars in damage to cars, homes, trees and, powerlines. Our power went out for 5 hours one day and a two hours another day. Hail damages around 3000 new cars at different dealer ships across the greater Chicagoland area. Torrential rains caused major flooding around rivers and in the cities street flooding. Probably the most severe storm hit Plainfield on the last day of the five. A F-4 tornado hit the community at around 2 pm in the afternoon and caused extensive damage throughout the area. Plainfield lies about 65 miles from here, so news networks in Chicago and Milwaukee heard of it right away. Some 200 people died in the storm and thousands were homeless. Foundations were wipped clean from the 225 mph winds. People said that the tornado was a half a mile wide at one point.
Since then this area hasn't seen anything of that intensity and for that long of a period of time.