Hot weather doesn’t relinquish its grip on an area’s weather easily and Monday was no exception. The day’s alternately stormy afternoon and evening weather unleashed 60+ m.p.h. wind gusts and 1” hail, resulting in property damage near Merrillville, Dyer, Crown Point, Griffith and St. John, Ind.; and farther west in Grundy County’s Morris, Ill. The gusts with several mid-afternoon storms in northwest Indiana bent utility poles. They remained standing—but at a 45-degree angle to the ground near Merrillville.
Heavy damage was reported in central Morris from Old Stage Road to east Washington Street in what may have been a microburst. The collapse of 47,000-foot-top thunderstorms allowed dense rain-cooled air suspended aloft by the storms’ updrafts to come crashing to earth, where it fanned out as the water from a running hose might if pointed at the ground. New storms northwest of Chicago late Monday evening made barricades necessary in Rockton, Ill., southwest of Beloit. Water stood three feet deep there, and roads were submerged.
Flood warnings were issued for Winnebago, Boone and McHenry counties in Illinois and Rock County, Wis. The eastbound thunderstorms threatened to bring heavy rains to other sections of the Chicago area overnight.
--By Tom Skilling, WGN-TV Chief Meteorologist
WGN-TV Chief Meteorologist Tom Skilling and the WGN Weather Center staff provide daily coverage of weather in the Chicago area.
