Tornado sirens activated as funnels sweep NW suburbs — chicagotribune.com
The muggiest air of 2007, which first reached the area Sunday, exploded Wednesday for a fifth consecutive day into downpour and funnel-cloud producing t-storms. Doppler radar velocity measurements identified tornadic rotation around 2:45 p.m. Wednesday afternoon in northern Kane County. A flurry of funnel reports ensued from Maple Park to Schaumburg, prompting the activation of tornado sirens.
It’s been awfully, awfully wet, humid, hot, and stormy for days, and yesterday was highlighted with a little trip to the basement for us at work.
I started hearing people talking about the weather in concerned tones after lunch – I’d spent my meal hour watching the rain come sluicing down the windows of the cafeteria, and on the way back through the covered walkway to my building, it hammered a tatoo-like drumbeat on the flat metal roof. People were standing outside under an awning walkway that was just a sheet of moving water with their shoes getting soaking wet, because the sidewalk was the only place for all the water on that side of the building to go downhill.
Upstairs, some of the team leaders and people on the emergency evac team started grabbing their red hats to get ready for an announcement, because a couple of the agents had had calls from panicked kids at home who’d heard the tornado sirens in their part of the suburbs and didn’t know what to do. I’m supposed to be on that team too, so I got my clipboard and cell phone and looked fruitlessly for my hat.
Apparently, a funnel cloud had actually been sighted out here where we live, and it was headed toward work. A double whammy, whee! David tells me he and his work and online buddies were watching the webcam to see if the house would blow away.
My TL was out for the day – she has a real knack for being out when a real emergency happens – and I was “Acting TL” for my team. So as soon as they made the official announcement, “log out of the phones and go to the basement,” I called the outside contacts on my list to inform them – one of which was probably hunkered down herself, as the storm came from her direction – and went to my designated wait point. I’m supposed to check the floor and bathrooms and meet people at the elevator who have to be escorted by someone from the building because they can’t walk down multiple flights of stairs. Last time we had a drill, I forgot that part and nobody ever came up from building services to escort them down the freight elevator, so I was determined to get it right.
Not to be. Half of the people waiting at the freight elevator decided not to wait for the building guy, so they went down with my nod. The other half that were supposed to be there either went down already, or went down the stairs. I had one person with me, and nobody from the building was coming. Some of the other TLs cleared the floor and called it in, and then also called the building contact for an escort. That’s when we realized the freight elevator was shut off, so all of us waited around for a while before just bagging the thing and taking the main elevators down, which WERE still running.
The building has never gotten around to specifying locations for each floor of each tower to gather in in the basements (which are huge but labyrinthine) so I wandered around trying to check off everyone on my list that was there yesterday. Last time, I totally forgot about a couple of new people, so I made sure to add them. Never did find the person who has joined this new team that took over parts of my old support job, although several people said they’d seen her.
People stood or sat on the floor, chatting in crowded groups. Finally, we got the all clear to go back up, and I walked up about 5 flights with one of the new guys. We got disoriented on this one floor because there seemed to be only the freight elevator access, until we realized that half of the floor had been closed off with wooden doors (not fire doors). The other half had no office access at all – it was just weird! Only a couple of anonymous doors back by the freight elevator. I’d never noticed that no one ever gets off at the fifth floor from the main elevators before.
There was a lot of flooding in outlying areas, but by the time I got home there wasn’t much to see, even across the little creek near the forest preserve. It was quite, quite full but not flooding, at least then.
Couldn’t sleep much last night, as it happens, and yes, it rained again. This is getting ridiculous.
[tags]weather, rain, tornado, deluge[/tags]