An Unusual Evening

Last night we had a unusally strong thunderstorm. We heard on the news that the trains on the lines in the western suburbs were stopped because of the weather. When we lost our sattelite tv signal, we knew that the bad weather was on the way. The sky kept getting darker and darker, the street lights went on. I knew that the wind was picking up when the tree branches started to sway. Then the hail started. The pellets hit our skylights hard and sounded like rocks. The grass and sidewalk was covered with hail. The deck was flooded, so was the street. The rain was coming in almost vertically, and was full of bits of leaves. This lasted for about a 30 minutes. When it stopped, we saw that there were a few branches on the front lawn and the street was flooded to over the curbs.
This morning, we really saw the damage. We escaped with nothing except a few branches down. Next door, they lost a tree, which is now blocking the sidewalk. Across the street a tree split. The alley was blocked by a downed tree. A tree broke into two parts in the cemetary, but the split was about 10 feet above the ground. The streets are covered with a layer of leaf bits. The sidewalks are also covered with leaves. The damage was confined to a small area of Wilmette, a few blocks north and south of our street.
Today, the rain started up again, and it rained quite heavily for several hours. The streets flooded again. I don't think that the rain is over yet. Maybe more tomorrow. I hope that the drought that had affected northern Illinois for the past several years is over.
Pictures tomorrow.