On July 15th, 2024 a derecho swept across Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana with 80-100 mph winds and numerous tornadoes. As of July 23rd, Illinois has surpassed 40 tornadoes for the event, making it the single-most tornadoes in one day for the state. I'll have a longer write-up shortly, but wanted to share my latest Storm Observation VLOG which covers the entire day from my end.
I intercepted, or "got involved with" the derecho in northwest Illinois where I was overtaken in Geneseo. I used Interstate 80 to get ahead of the storms again, and then dropped south on Interstate 39 to try to head-off the intense portion of the derecho that was now blasting toward my home in Champaign-Urbana but was overtaken again north of Bloomington.
I came in behind the storms in Champaign-Urbana with no power at home and a basement that was rapidly taking on water - meanwhile my neighborhood had been ravaged by destructive winds and there were trees laying on houses and cars everywhere.
I returned home from a week-long family vacation just 24 hours before the derecho, and I feel like I needed all of last week to catch up from vacation exhaustion followed by derecho clean-up and recovery so I'm behind on content sharing from the event. I'll get a longer write-up about the day posted this week, but for now, enjoy the flick.