Staff, wire reports
Heavy winds from an evening thunderstorm toppled a large cedar tree Friday at the residence of Alease Cline of Welch Road.
“It just pulled the tree out of the yard, roots and all,” Cline said. “I was sitting here, and I saw the wind blowing both of the trees in my front yard. They would go back and forth, back and forth.
“All of a sudden, this tree started going down and didn’t come back up.”
Cline said she moved from the front of the house when the tree started going down because she didn’t know which direction it was going to fall. “It didn’t hit the house,” she said. “It fell on my driveway and almost over on my neighbor’s driveway.”
The rain was falling so hard that 84-year-old Cline said she couldn’t see her neighbor’s house through the downpour. “I’d never seen anything like it,” she said.
Cline, who has lived in her house in the Meadowbrook subdivision for 13 years, said she was amazed the wind spared a rotting tree in her yard and took down the healthy cedar.
Storms elsewhere
Flash flooding closed roads all over Illinois, and meteorologists said severe thunderstorms and high winds caused more problems throughout the state.
The utility company Ameren reported nearly 13,000 people were without power Friday. The National Weather Service issued tornado warnings for more than 10 counties in central Illinois.
Flash flood warnings were in effect for about 35 counties, mainly in the central part of the state. Airlines were reporting delays of 90 minutes or more at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport.