Remember all that talk late last week about the worst flooding in years?
Well, roads were closed, basements waterlogged and low land submerged, but the large-scale flooding that might have been was not. And rain is out of the forecast until next year.
“We have five days to dry out,” said Amy Seeley, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service. “If anyone did have problems, they don’t have to worry about any precipitation for a few days here.”
The Chicago Water Reclamation District opened the sluice gates in Wilmette, sending storm and sewage water into Lake Michigan. But they did not have to open the gates at the O’Brien lock on the city’s South Side, said spokeswoman Jill Horist.
Citywide, there was water in basements and standing on streets from slow-draining catch basins, but the river did not flood, said Tom LaPorte, spokesman for the Department of Water Management.
Folks in Riverside stood on guard for flooding Saturday night into Sunday. Some still were repairing damage from September, the last time the Des Plaines River surged. This time, the river stopped well over a foot shy of those levels.
Not that the cleanup won’t be a pain for Gene Head, 50. The River Forest man has waist-high water in his basement. He had thrown away most of the stuff in his basement after the last flood and now he’ll likely throw away the rest, he said.
About the only silver lining Head could find about Mother Nature’s two-punch combo is learning how to duck a little better on the second swing. He moved the cars before the storm, sandbagged the back door and knew better than to fret.
“This time we were like, ‘There’s nothing you can do about it,’ ” he said.
Several other areas, including Bolingbrook and Warrenville, saw roads closed and minor home flooding, but evaded the worst-case scenarios.
“We have to plan for the worst and hope for the best, and what we got was somewhere in between those,” said Kent McKenzie, Lake County (Ill.) emergency management coordinator.
