Des Plaines gets "slapped"

[DonSchap]

I know this is my little center of the known Universe, but yesterday was a day from Hell!

I snapped this shot of the cloud pattern, over my house, just as the 80-mph sheer winds came in and leveled the entire set of power line poles along Mannheim Road, in Des Plaines. Between the loss of that line and a power distribution site being struck by lightning, all power was down immediately, in a huge area of the town (yeah, where I live, too! ). It actually stopped the Wisconsin Central freight train that goes through town, blocking traffic for miles. We had news helicopters hovering over the incident for a good hour, getting images of the devastation. That close to O'Hare International Airport ... you know it was "big time" news!



I mean, they are talking about it talking about it taking 5-full-days to rebuild this run and are suggesting that people with power needs look for other shelter in that part of town, because of the outage. It is a five square mile, high density residential area and corporate park.

The power in our area came back up for about thirty minutes, then our local transformer arced with a brilliant blue flash, three times, and the power was gone, again. I cut the main breaker to keep any more of these false starts from whacking the electronics in the house and was on generator power for a good part of the night, until the power system was fully restored to the transformer on our side of the block. Another five $3/gallon of gas for some juice ... energy costs on the rise.

Rough Friday! More images to come ...

Here, a main cut-through street was blocked as this tree top took out the power lines to a house.



This "weeping willow", at Lake Opeka, weeps no more ... as it was snapped off, at the roots, as the wind swept over the lake and brought it down.



The entire thing lasted only about twenty minutes, but there was Hell to pay!

In one of the more bizarre items of interest, yesterday, .. and kind of personal ... this was MY corner's telephone pole ...
trying to disguise itself to look like a tree! You can also see the 'news chopper' (red arrow), hovering in the distance,
examining the power pole devastation along Mannheim Road.

I mean, look at that sky!!! You'd think nothing was wrong ... the weather front was that tight! I know it was not the horror of a tornado, but still, It just came, kicked us in the groin ... and LEFT! Things happen fast ... get a picture!

EDIT: (12:06P, Saturday) The transformer just arced, again! Power's gone! ... UPS to the rescue!

[sparkie1263]

I hope you didn't get any damage.

Frank

[SONYNUT]

They say we (mn) had a record day for the amount of tornados....it was nasty out there...tornados suck...

They say they were topping out over 60,000 ft......thats one hell of a ride for a farm full of 200,000 turkeys

[SONYNUT]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcaEo2FH1eU


I did a time laps of the storm

[DonSchap]

Steve,

That was a really nice "TL" of the storm. I am a little leery about leaving the camera outside when the day is nice ... not even close to that!

What program did you use to sew the shots together?

[DonSchap]

I hope you didn't get any damage.

Frank

There were some minor limb losses in the rear tree.

The new dog escaped for his "crate" (by literally forcing the door open with BOTH latches set) and ransacked my SO's office, while we were out shopping. He did more damage than the storm did!

We got tossed inside and out, yesterday!

[SONYNUT]

it's not with my sony...it's with my 'image source' camera...it is an industrial cmos camera

http://www.theimagingsource.com/en_U...or/dfk61auc02/

it is just a head...it run off of a computer program... i have a 50 ft usb that i use...i can put it in any window ect...

it is a pretty cool little camera......i use it for my microscope, telescope,,any of my minolta lenses,,any c mount lens..
as for the program..you can shoot video..time laps..stills...timed stills..with full control remotely...(no focus or iris)

[SONYNUT]

for one thing i can at least see if a twisters coming...

[Elisha]

Mother Nature damages suck big time.

You got a new dog?

[DonSchap]

Unfortunately, I was a little too quick on the damages trigger. There was a branch down, that the power company said they would be back for ... and left to handle other calls. Well ... the problem refused to be ignored and VVVVVVVVVVVAAAAMMMPPP! No power, again, as the branch took out three high voltage lines, right next door. Yep, power company has to come back ... only it is a lot worse than if they had JUST removed the stupid branch, when requested to. Four hours worse.

We lost the rest of the afternoon to no power ... and had the emergency generator running for the third time in twelve hours! I even had the neighbor's refrigerators pulling their power from our system. Gotta keep that beer frosty, right?

I also had the power guys remove that stupid branch from the telephone pole. Yeah, it was cute, but it will wither in a week and just look tacky.

You got a new dog?

@ Elisha82: Yeah, new dog, as of last Saturday. His name is "SOX" (not my first choice in a name) ...

A850 w/ SONY CZ 135mm f/1.8

and he's quite a feisty pup!