Midwest storms

A week ago - a week! - I had come in from my 6-mile training run, had my Gatorade, showered, dressed, eaten breakfast, and was awaiting Conrad when we both heard some noises like the building shaking. Poked my head round to see out the window. Blackening skies. Headed to the window, watched a screen from a window on the highrise across the street blow down the side of that building. Wind whipping. Rain starting up.

Wow.

The ferocity of Midwest storms has always surprised and fascinated me. Vancouver, the west coast, they get rain. Lots of it. Incessant. Grey. Dreary and damp. In Chicago, the storm rolls in fast, hits hard, leaves you breathless, and dashes off. The lightning is a marvel, the resultant sunrises can be magnificent, and the threat of bad hail or flooding in areas or even tornadoes is real.

Conrad and I agreed that no umbrella we had would stand up to the storm, and he graciously drove me all the way to work rather than drop me at a train downtown as is usual. Good thing, too. I snapped these shots early in our commute, and I only wish I could have better captured the storm in its violent glory.

wetter still

We're having a bedtime lull in the storms. Little wind, no rain, no lightning. But jeepers, for a handful of hours there, things were mighty awesome in a truer sense of the word. The result: enormous puddles, flooded streets, flooded basements (including the basement of our highrise), power outages (the block across the street from us, for example), branches torn from trees, trees blown over, even streetlights and traffic lights blown over. A real mess.

Oh, and for about 10 to 15 minutes at the end of my workday, everyone in the building was herded into the central stairwells - a tornado had been reported in the suburbs and an alert was issued for the city.

I caught a few shots out the window at one especially wet period around dinner time.



I opened the balcony door to get shots outside, unhampered by the splatter of drops on a window. Mistake! Wind whipped rain at me and I immediately retreated inside. I did catch some shots of an impressive sunset.
No lightning photos, though, this despite a stretch of a few hours where five minutes could not pass without a bolt lighting the sky.