Rain fell between 2 and 4 p.m. on Chicago’s north side as heavily as in some hurricanes and tropical storms, coming down at one point at nearly 4” an hour. (That’s a pace which equals the rate at which rain fell in deadly Tropical Storm Allison which submerged sections of Houston, Texas under nearly 37” of rain in June, 2001.)
At the height of Tuesday afternoon’s storms, cloud-to -ground lightning flashed more than 1,700 times in single 10- minute period within a 225-mile radius of Chicago. Lightning accompanied the blinding downpours here which forced traffic to a standstill on the North Side, swamping sections of the city’s Lakeview neighborhood with 3.70” of rain while drenching the area adjacent to Wrigley Field with 3.46”. Sections of north Lakeshore Drive were closed to traffic for a time into the evening and a number of north side roads were seriously flooded.
--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.
