Friday, July 1, 2011

Into the Darkness....

Power was restored four hours ago while I was sleeping...Around 8:30 last night, just as I was checking through my blogs, power went out at place. Strong winds up to 70 mph, blasted Racine's coastline from a storm over the lake. Basically, what we got was an outflow from the storm, a big downburst of wind. With nothing to do, we headed out to take pictures of the storm damage.


Waves off Lake Michigan at the lighthouse



Downed tree on Four Mile Road by the lighthouse



Downed tree near English and Green Streets

According to the Journal Times this morning, most of the outages were in the City of Racine, about 8,900 customers. About 2,000 Caledonia customers, 450 in Wind Point and 350 in Mount Pleasant were reportedly without power. A long night for public workers...

13 comments:

jedwis said...

Nice pics Drew... I basically had nothing but high winds in Franksville.

OrbsCorbs said...

I was online when my power went out at 8 PM. It wasn't restored until 2:30 AM - or that's when I noticed the alarm clock was working again. If terrorists ever take out the power grid, we're screwed.

Sassa said...

What a great wind. God it was powerful. My lights flickered a couple of times but never went out. I LOVE storms. Poor little birdie nest outside on the sidewalk. Must drive Hwy 32 today to IL then to Milw for Summerfest. Where is the HOT sun?

kkdither said...

I saw the swirling clouds and noticed how dark it was getting inside the house. I stepped out to get a better look and close the garage door. The wind whipped up so fast. Clumps of leaves, sticks and sandy-like debris was hitting me. I could hear sharp cracking noises, which I later assumed to be trees cracking and coming down. There is one huge tree down in my neighbors yard.

I made a bee line to the house. There was sand, dirt and debris in my eyes and down my shirt... inside my bra... don't ask me how that happened. That was one powerful downburst! lol

My power, internet, everything was fine, except for my tv cable. That was out until I went to bed. Sometime late in the night, or early morning, the carbon monoxide detector sounded, which meant the power went out. It remained out until just 15 minutes ago. I am so happy to have the fridge and freezer running again... not to mention finally getting a cup of coffee and my morning JTI update.

Thanks for the pictures, drew. Thanks to the police and first responders, too. When no one was on the JTI, I assumed most of you lost your connections/power. I listened to the scanner. Those guys were very, very busy. On top of the natural problems they had a major domestic dispute to deal with.... like they needed more.

jedwis said...

KK said"I made a bee line to the house. There was sand, dirt and debris in my eyes and down my shirt... inside my bra... don't ask me how that happened. That was one powerful downburst! lol"

smart debris on a mission... lol

hale-bopp said...

I looked at the radar loop and it was pretty interesting. The storms were almost entirely over Lake Michigan moving north to south. It looked like one particularly intense western end of one storm just barely passed over the Racine area and then was over water again. Ten miles farther east and you might not have known anything was happening.

Toad said...

I saw It on Radar. All of those years living In Racine, I don't ever remember having a storm come straight down the Lake, like this one did.

Why Not? said...

We were in the Dells and didn't get home until 11:30 p.m., we were completely unaware that any rough weather was going on.. by us it was very warm and still. driving home I felt it was a bit windy, but nothing terrible. When we got here we saw a lot of limbs and branches down in the park along with a good size tree.. it wasn't even one of those that were marked to get cut down due to a big crack in it..

SER said...

I was lucky, no outage! I was at my daughters house, we were sitting in her backyard when it came up, big old branch come crashing down in her yard, I told her I had to go home before the wind blows me away...

Toad, that was crazy, the storm coming down the lake, I don't think I have ever saw that before either.

drewzepmeister said...

We were gone for the day at Grayslake, IL, visiting. It was warm and humid down there with temps almost in the 90's. It was certainly cooler when we got back to Racine. There was no way of knowing that this was gonna happen.

kkdither said...

I think I may have muttered, "Auntie Em, Auntie Em!" It was exciting, until it got scary. The stuff hitting me stung.

Toad said...

The storm was just off Waukegan when I looked at It, and I'll tell you what. Had It come over Racine as powerful as It was over the Lake off Waukegan, you would have had hail the size of baseballs at least. It was a tight ball of fire.

OrbsCorbs said...

I reported the outage to WE Energies last night. They were swamped and had their automated system up to accept reports. This morning, WE left an automated message on my answering machine stating that the cause of the outage was "unknown" (then how did they restore power?) and 1,100-some customers were affected.

As last night wore on, I got bored, so I took a drive. I, too, was surprised by the number of limbs down. And the outage was spotty. Some blocks had power, others didn't. But all the street lights were working. This is south side.

This morning, I noticed that the traffic lights were out on Main and High Sts., and at the new lights on Main and Goold Sts.