Tornado in the city??

Whoa.....we had some serious crazy weather today in our fine city. Now did you hear about the tornado in Brooklyn recently? Yeah, who would think THAT could happen?

Apparently, that's what happened in Chicago today. One of my coworkers got a call from his wife from their suburban home telling him that their trampoline was picked up and thrown right through their wood fence. Even though that may suck, tornado's are pretty common in the southern burbs where they live. The good news is that she and the kids were safe. Then another coworker gets a frantic call from his wife who works on the 73rd floor of a Michigan Ave building around 3pm because she was being evacuated to the basement of her building. WTF? A tornado? DOWNTOWN?

I log on to my weatherbug and sure enough, there is a Tornado WARNING for my zip code.....in Lincoln Park. Yes, "warning"...as in, "twister spotted". It already looked like death outside and all of a sudden the building shook for 6 straight seconds (okay it doesn't seem long but it sure as hell does when you are IN the building).

I left work and getting home from downtown
seemed pretty uneventful. As I drove north to pick up my dog from daycare, I saw trees down all over the place...but it got worse as I went north. The daycare told me they had a huge branch that snapped in their backyard but all of the dogs were safe.

Brian and I got home around the same time and we couldn't even drive through our gate since our power was out; forcing us to drive around to our back gate. Just in the two block drive to the back gate I saw at least 4 trees down and debris scattered EVERYWHERE. I pull up to the garage door and the first thing I notice is all of the water is completely drained out of our pond. Can someone explain to me how 35 gallons of water gets removed from a pond during a torrential downpour?? Or was it sucked out?

We head up to the rooftop deck to check out the damage. If my camera wasn't broken, I'd take some pics right now. We find our heavy teak furniture was all over and in disarray. The hot tub cover that is too heavy for me to lift was halfway off the hot tub. The flowers...trashed. Cushions from the furniture....missing. The worst part was that one of the posts of our deck was moved in about 6 inches which snapped the deck walls that were attached.

Just as we were about to straighten up the roof, it starts pouring again. Storm #2 is in full effect. Our power is back on though and the weather seems to be calming down, BUT, there are still flash flood warnings and severe thunderstorm warnings.

Great. ANOTHER storm is on the way?

Someone should call my boss and reassure him that he's right. There is no such thing as Global Warming and it sure as heck doesn't wreak havoc on our weather. :\

For more pictures, check out http://www.chicagotribune.com/ or http://www.suntimes.com/.