Rain leads to floods, rescues
An intense round of storms brought historic rainfall to the Chicago area Friday night into Saturday and left the suburbs to deal with its consequences Saturday and beyond.
Flooded streets, parking lots and basements, submerged vehicles, delays in air travel and lightning-sparked fires all struck the North, Northwest and West suburbs throughout the day.
And forecasters said any more rain that hits the area soon will have nowhere to go, causing runoff and additional flooding if more storms hit Sunday.
“The ground is not going to have enough time to recover, even though we were dry for so long,” said Richard Castro, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Romeoville. “The ground is now fully saturated. Any additional torrential rain will just be runoff.”
By late Saturday morning the rainfall total at O’Hare International Airport since the calendar switched to July 23 already was a historic 6.86 inches. That total broke the previous record of 6.64 inches, set Sept. 13, 2008, according to the National Weather Service.
And that amount doesn’t include all the water the storm dumped on the area. Starting Friday night, it brought 8.20 inches to O’Hare. Elsewhere in the suburbs, Arlington Heights got 7.25 inches of rain in 24 hours; Elk Grove Village was hit with 7.17 inches; Inverness reported 6.5 inches; and 6.06 inches fell at Chicago Executive Airport in Wheeling.
“We’re on the north side of the intense heat that we’ve had all week,” Castro said. “The rainfall rates are typical to what you’d see in a hurricane even — that’s how tropical this air mass is.”
Lightning from the storm sparked fires in Lake in the Hills, where lightning damaged a home’s roof; Elgin, where a church steeple took a hit; and St. Charles, where a home suffered about $100,000 worth of damage, but no one was injured. In Mount Prospect, where the storm may have contributed to a fire in a three-story apartment building, the library also was closed because of 2 feet of water that pooled in its parking garage. In one of the more bizarre storm incidents, a 15-by-20- foot sinkhole opened up at Dundee and Hicks roads in Palatine Saturday afternoon. Southbound Hicks was closed between Rand Road and Dundee in case the sinkhole collapsed further, Palatine fire Battalion Chief William Gabrenya said.
Officials from the Illinois Department of Transportation and the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago were on the scene Saturday. Gabrenya said the sinkhold might be a sewer-related issue.
Authorities in towns near the Des Plaines and Fox rivers watched the waterways closely Saturday, trying to predict at what time and water level they would crest.
On Saturday afternoon, the Fox River looked “very manageable,” although water levels in some of its tributaries were “a little high,” Algonquin Police Sgt. Robert Salazar said.
The Des Plaines River was above flood stage, Deputy Fire Chief Randy Trost said, but no one had to be rescued from the river.
It was another story on suburban streets, where police and fire departments from Des Plaines, Palatine and Bensenville rescued stranded motorists from their vehicles.
Bensenville firefighters rescued a man whose vehicle became stuck in floodwaters after he attempted to drive through a restricted construction zone Saturday morning.
No injuries were reported in the incident about 7:40 a.m. under an unfinished train overpass at York and Irving Park roads, Battalion Chief Kevin Herrick said.
In Palatine, firefighters responded to about 75 emergency calls since storms started rolling through, Gabrenya said. Harper College was among thousands of ComEd customers without power, which wasn’t expected to be restored until Sunday or Monday.
While standing water on most of Palatine’s public streets has drained, police Cmdr. Randy Walker said several private properties including retail parking lots and residential parking garages remain waterlogged.
“I went to bed thinking I was going to sleep through a storm,” said Eric Kinkel, a Palatine resident whose car became submerged when the underground parking lot at his condominium complex flooded. “Instead, I woke up to a major, major flood in our garage, of all things, where you think you’re safe.”
In Arlington Heights, rain flooded virtually the entire parking lot of International Plaza on Golf Road just east of Arlington Heights Road, where gapers gathered to snap photos.
Arlington Heights police said they were working with village public works crews to drain two streets — northbound Northwest Highway at the intersection with Chestnut Avenue downtown and a one-block area of Palatine Road’s frontage road between Ridge and Fernandez avenues. Then, public works crews could begin assisting with flooding on private property such as the International Plaza parking lot.
According to ComEd’s website, between 16,600 and 35,000 suburban customers remained blacked out late Saturday afternoon because of the storm.
And at rain-soaked O’Hare International Airport, delays for incoming flights averaged about an hour and 19 minutes Saturday morning, according to the Chicago Department of Aviation’s website. By midafternoon, delays were down to 15 minutes or less on average.
July 2011 now is the third-wettest July on record in Chicago, trailing July 1889’s total of 9.56 inches and July 1957’s total of 8.84 inches, according to the National Weather Service.
And forecasters say the weekend’s torrential storms and the possibility for more rain before a cold front moves through have the potential to make this July the Chicago area’s wettest on record.
Ÿ Daily Herald staff writers Elena Ferrarin, Deborah Pankey and Josh Stockinger contributed to this report.
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