I was driving home from work when the first severe storm reports broke in on the radio. I was meeting my wife at a restaurant and by the time I got there, pretty much the whole sky was rotating. It was dizzying, frightening and mezmerizing all at once. I can understand why people stand and stare long after they should have taken shelter...after all, it's exactly what we did.

There wasn't much wind at first, but the cloud movement was startling. Smaller cels of rotation formed inside the massive spinning storm. I honestly thought we'd soon see a funnel, but one never formed where we were.

There was enough wind to blow a large tree over onto a house down the street from ours, a nice little two-storey which the owners have been renovating for a couple of years. Oh well...that's why God made insurance. There were also a few surprisingly isolated flash floods...I've never seen rain so tighly focussed on small areas.

So far this summer, northern Illinois has been cursed with some very interesting weather.