The bands of RADAR were getting very intense with each passing frame and I showed them off to my anti-meteorology (because of my excessive weather babbling for the last two years). The Severe thunderstorm warning had extended across all of Cook county and into surrounding communities as well. There was no way to avoid this storm. We arrived at the restaurant around 8:15 pm, and yes you guessed it, attained a window seat!
I called Eddy wondering what his opinion was of all this to find out he had already been pounded with its attributes. My friend Mandy and I got a strawberry shake to split and sat outside, soaking up the warmth and humidity. The atmosphere was prime in my words. I remember overhearing a man talking to his wife on his phone about the approaching squall line. I gave him my estimated time for its arrival and said," Take this seriously, don't ignore the warnings! Its gonna be a bad one!" Mandy added," Yeah, she knows what shes talking about. Shes my weather-nerd 411."
My mom saw me pacing outside, pointing and yelling back to Mandy and took the hint it was time to get moving. The lightning grew frequent and a light rain and moved in by 8:49pm. I remember looking back out the window and seeing a lowering with the approaching front of the storm. My mom locked the windows. I was unable to confirm it as a wall cloud which produced a EF1 stovepipe tornado. My mom continued on with her tactic of driving forward even though I requested stopping numerous times. We were moving north through Mount Prospect, IL "out of the storms way." I hate to burst her bubble and say that the storm is a north-south line extending about 80 miles long and there was no way to avoid it. We drove for about two minutes longer until a eccentric flash of bluish-green light lit up our eyes. I shouted,"Power Surge!!!", and that's when my mom started freaking out again. She turned up the radio to hear the announcers talk about what happened more than thirty minutes ago to our west, even though I was giving her real, accurate, and information on our exact location. Then visibility dropped drastically and we pulled into a persons driveway to avoid an accident with oncoming traffic.
We rode out the viscous storm with 60-70mph and zero visibility. There was tree branches the size of cars that had fallen into the road. I called in the high winds into the Romeoville NWS. I'm not positive but there was a path of damage and at least 3 power surges around 8:59pm that could have been caused by the tornado or a micro-burst.
