Thunderstorms produce damage a second day

With the cleanup from this week’s first wave of thunderstorms only getting underway across southern suburbs into Indiana Tuesday afternoon, the last thing the Chicago area needed was a new outbreak of powerful storms. Yet, that’s exactly what happened Wednesday afternoon. A pool of unseasonably cold air aloft, combined with daytime heating caused the atmosphere to destabilize rapidly encouraging air to ascend with a vengeance. T-storms were the result. Only this time, its was the northern suburbs which bore the brunt of the storms. For an hour and a half beginning north of Rockford just after 4 p.m., bursts of strong winds gushed out of southeastbound t-storms radar-scanned up to 30,000 ft. tall. A trail of damage was soon strewn from the Illinois/Wisconsin line into McHenry County and across northern Kane and DeKalb counties east to Lake Michigan.
--By Tom Skilling, WGN-TV Chief Meteorologist