Tom Skilling (local weatherman extraordinaire) says that what we had last night may have qualified as a "gustnado". ( From the Tribune's 'weather center': "There are five general types of straight line winds. Downburst, microburst, gust front, bow echo and derecho. Of those five, downburst and gust front winds were depicted on radar between 8PM and 9PM over the west and northwest suburbs of Chicago.
There remains the possibility these winds spun up a brief gustnado. A gustando is not considered a tornado, and develops in a much different way from the classic supercell tornado.")It sounds like we had 60-80 mph winds.
About 300 flights were cancelled, so Tom went to get Emily and Alex and they got back here around 1AM. They left again early this morning, took a train down to Midway. Just got word that they are safely at the airport.
After dropping them off at the train station the kids and I drove around to survey the local damage. There were a few large trees down and lots of branches. Also several places where power is still out, so some businesses are closed, defeating my plan to enjoy our damage tour with Starbucks in hand.
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