Southern Illinois Inland Hurricane

Yesterday wasn't a good day and today wasn't much better. First let me say that my family, myself and most of my community are very lucky. We thank the Lord for that and even though we'll have a few difficult days in front of us, it's widely known that it could have been much worse. We experienced what the NWS classified as an Inland Hurricane. We were under a severe thunderstorm warning but who could have known what was coming. We had sustained winds of 109 mph which struck out of nowhere. We worry about tornadoes, never been a need to worry about hurricanes. There was circular motion and you could track the eye of the storm as it moved across Southern Illinois.

As I mention, we are all very lucky. To my knowledge there has only been one reported death related to the storm. We have wide spread devastation in which 4 counties have been declared state disaster areas. The storm followed a major west/east hwy and hit all major municipalities in all 4 counties. 3 of the 4 county seats are still without power some 30 hrs after being hit and projected to remain without power for 3-10 days.

My mother-in-law lives 60 miles west of me. She has two totaled vehicles, a vinyl fence which is destroyed, a few broken windows and a barn which was flattened. Unfortunately I do not have any pictures of her property damage. We were a bit luckier than she was. We have damage to our vinyl fence but not as severe as hers. We have 5 trees down and will start on that clean up tomorrow. Today was spent working at my property in Galatia which is 10 miles west of my home. I knew there was damage but had no idea how much until I pulled up to the property at 7am this morning. I'll be honest, when I saw what was in front of me I burst into tears. Even though I was so very thankful that the house had been spared barring a few shingles the amount of work was just overwhelming. It's a 2 acre property plus the damage we have have on our 3 acres made we want to cut every single tree down to the ground and be done with it. Thanks to my husband, daughter, son-in-law, step brother and sister-in-law for jumping in and helping me out today. What you see in the above pictures has been cleaned up except for removing the large wood which has been stacked and will be saved for camp wood. Not bad for a days work.