Tony Lyza
EF3
7/17/03. My area was blitzed by a severe right-turning tornado-warned supercell. This monster developed in the northwestern suburbs of Chicago, moved east, and then plowed south-southeast through the city and into the south suburbs and northwestern Indiana. At the time, I was near the city limits at a piano lesson. The storm followed and eventually caught up with us on the way home (if it weren't for the fact that my mom insisted on stopping for milk even with the sky being forest green, it wouldn't have caught up to us, but that's another story). Anyway, by the time we got home, the power was out, and we were stuck in the van. My dad was home, but he did not want to compromise the structure of the house. This, though making it a frightfully scary situation for my mom and me, was probably not a bad decision. Only a minute or so after we got to the driveway, the brunt of the storm hit. For 15-20 minutes, we had winds that I estimate as a storm spotter as gusting as high as 110-120+ MPH WITH TENNIS BALL SIZED HAIL FALLING SIMULTANEOUSLY. Sustained winds in that time were probably 80-100 MPH. All sorts of debris flew around our neighborhood. Parts of fences, garages, trees, trampolines all were flying around. It was clearly one of several twisting microbursts that struck our area. That day solidified my obessesion with severe weather.
