Thursday, August 23, 2007

Stormy weather

My commute home this afternoon was interesting to say the least. I left work early because I was feeling a little under the weather (pun not intended, really). It wasn't raining when I entered the subway, but by the time we came up above ground the storm had started.

The train returned above ground, but before we got to Armitage the train stopped. We just sat there for probably 10 minutes, then started moving again. All was well until we pulled out of the Addison station, when we stopped again, this time for even longer. The only thing we were told was that there was an emergency situation and we would be moving shortly.

I pulled out my Blackberry to see if there were any alerts on the CTA website (ha!) or if there were any news reports. Then I noticed that a woman sitting across the aisle from me was taking pictures with her camera phone. Other passengers were getting up and looking out the window on the east side of the train. So, of course, I had to look too. There were two downed trees. One looked like it was split in half, and the part of that tree that fell landed on a car. The other tree had been uprooted.

I'm not sure how long we waited, but eventually we started moving. It turned out there was debris on the tracks. There were a lot of fallen trees until we hit Wilson, and then I didn't see any anymore. I was hoping that all would have been spared in my neighborhood, but that wasn't to be. As I approached my building I saw that there was a tree down in the playground of the day care center. I then noticed that down the street a tree had demolished a garage. My car was parked next to that house, so I walked down there to make sure a tree wasn't on my car. Luckily for me (but not for that homeowner) the tree only fell onto the garage and not onto any of the cars parked on the street.

Unfortunately my boyfriend left the window open in the bedroom when he left for work today. There is a construction site next to our building, so there were dirty water drops on the wall and on the dresser. The comforter, some clothing in a dresser drawer that wasn't closed all the way, some of my yarn, and the carpet were soaked. I think the comforter is dry now.

I hope that any readers from the Chicago area didn't have to deal with damage.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Time to get a new boyfriend :)

My street looked like a war zone, some of the cars did get hit, my house and garage were fine and no water in the basement, yet!

2:53 PM  
Blogger redhairedgirl said...

I know! :)

I'm glad you and your things came out unscathed. For as much damage as I saw, no one I know personally suffered any, thank goodness.

10:04 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home