Bus shelter laid flat by high winds on Morse Avenue.

Yesterday a hailstorm ripped through the Rogers Park area of Chicago. Rogers Park is my neighborhood. For no more than 10 minutes, ferocious winds tore at trees and buildings, and hailstones — yes, hailstones in August – rained down noisily. It was actually a little scary for a few minutes. I still can’t believe we got hail on a day with temperatures in the 90s Fahrenheit (about 33 C).

Look at these pictures. Above is a photo of a bus stop near where I live. The entire shelter structure was knocked over, although incredibly there was no damage to the restaurant right next to it. Below is a picture of an entire tree that got knocked down. It’s incredible to me that the winds were that strong, even though I saw them knocking around the trees outside my apartment.

Some cars got smashed by falling branches, although not as many as I expected. Some buildings lost power for several hours, and the Chicago Transit Authority shut down the Rogers Park train stations for a while. At 5:00 I headed downtown, but had to take a very slow bus instead of the train. This made me quite late for the Franglish Meetup I was attending, but they couldn’t criticize my excuse!

Just as bizarre as the storm’s violence was its brevity and scope. By 3:20p the skies were clearing and by 4:00 (maybe earlier) we were back to sunshine. When I left the neighborhood I found out that the rest of Chicago hadn’t experienced this storm. As nearby as the Edgewater neighborhood, they experienced darkened skies and wind, but no hail. It was just parts of Evanston and Rogers Park, almost like a targeted strike. My dad (who knows I’m an atheist) joked that this means the wrath of God came upon us. It’s up to me to track down the sinners who brought this weather upon us and expel them from the neighborhood. I’d send them down to the properties that Donald Trump owns in downtown Chicago.

Farther north in Rogers Park, things were even worse. Photo by Bob Martin

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