The storm system that stalled over Chicago on Tuesday dumped inches of rain, disrupting air travel, flooding newly planted crops and keeping firefighters busy with lightning strikes.
Several hundred of about 2,700 flights scheduled at O’Hare International Airport were canceled as repeated lightning strikes–including one that punched a foot-long pothole in the tarmac–shut down runways.
While north-central Illinois received the brunt of the storm, more than 3 inches of rain fell on parts of the Chicago suburbs beginning Monday night, flooding underpasses and delaying Metra trains to the city.
The National Weather Service said 2.99 inches of rain fell at O’Hare on Tuesday, a record for the date, surpassing the previous high of 1.34 inches in 1993.
The Chicago Streets and Sanitation Department was deluged with calls about fallen tree limbs, malfunctioning traffic lights and downed wires.
The bad weather extended from Chicago to Dallas, creating a wall of storms that some planes could not get around, resulting in delays of up to nine hours for flights departing from dozens of cities to O’Hare.
“The shifting winds make it dangerous for planes to fly through the storm, and solid lines make it difficult, if not impossible, to fly around the weather,” said Elizabeth Isham Cory, a Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman.
“This is ridiculous,” said a disgusted Cliff Smith, 55, as he stood in a snaking line at the United Airlines ticket counter at O’Hare four hours after he was scheduled to board a plane home to Jacksonville.
American Airlines canceled about 35 percent of its flights, and United scrubbed 20 percent that were scheduled to arrive or depart at O’Hare.
In addition, more than two dozen flights bound for O’Hare were diverted to other cities, officials said. Flight delays and cancellations were reported to be much less severe at Midway Airport, although some departures to the South and West were halted during part of the afternoon.
Twelve hours after the rain started Monday night, more than 2 billion gallons of water filled the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District’s Deep Tunnel, said Peggy Bradley, a district spokeswoman.
Water, combined with some sewage, overflowed from dozens of sewers on Chicago’s North Side and the north suburbs into the Chicago and Des Plaines Rivers on Tuesday, she said. No wastewater had been diverted into Lake Michigan, the last resort if the Chicago River rises higher than lake level, she said.
“We’re not near that point yet,” she said. “We still have a 2-foot differential between level of lake and level of river.”
In northern Cook and Lake Counties, reports of lightning strikes kept firefighters busy.
Ed Murphy, a Schaumburg Fire Department battalion chief, said lightning struck a home in the 600 block of North Point Drive, starting a fire in the attic and knocking out drywall. Murphy said the tenants were on vacation, and no one was injured in the blaze.
“Unfortunately, they’re going to come home to a big mess,” he said.
In Lake Forest, a lightning strike forced five people to evacuate their home in the 800 block of Longwood Drive. No one was hurt, but the home sustained at least $80,000 in damage, according to Lake Forest police.
Rapidly rising water levels forced the Fox Waterway Agency to issue “no wake” boating restrictions Tuesday afternoon along the Fox River between the Algonquin Dam in Algonquin and the Stratton Dam near McHenry.
“We aren’t seeing flood levels yet, but we’re seeing fast-moving waters that call for boaters to be extra cautious,” said Frank Novak, lockmaster at the Stratton Dam.
In Winnebago County, near Rockford, farmers had hoped the storm would bring a half-inch of rain, just enough to coax recent plantings out of the ground.
But by midday Tuesday, rain gauges throughout the county were registering several inches.
“It’s not what we needed right now,” said Roger Christin, manager of the county’s Farm Bureau. “That’s a lot of rain in a very short period.”
