By Dee Longfellow
For The Elmhurst Independent
While tornado warnings were blasting every few minutes late Monday afternoon, a rare storm known as a derecho laid a path of destruction across the Midwest states, sweeping through Elmhurst at about 4 p.m. It left downed trees and power lines in its wake, causing blocked roadways and snarled traffic, made even worse when power outages caused many traffic signals to fail.
Often described as an inland hurricane, a derecho is similar to a tornado, but has no eye and its winds come across in a line, as opposed to swirled in a spiral. Winds can be as high as 100 mph (92 mph winds were clocked in Dixon), so a derecho can actually cause more damage than a tornado.
At press time, an estimate of the damage was unavailable. While power was out in some areas, it was unknown at press time how widespread the outages extended and how long they may have lasted. Despite the limited reports, there is a chance that there is damage in certain parts due to the effect these storms have, as time goes on we will have a clearer picture of what that is. Homeowners will be dealing with the fallout from this for a while as they try and get their homes back to their original state or better, so professionals will be on hand to get this looked at and dealt with, for example, some homeowners may need to have their guttering, eavestroughs, ledges, etc. replaced, click here to learn more on how that can be done, because if they are not seen to then they have the potential to cause further damage if left unattended. Hopefully, we will learn more as the story develops.
