National Weather Service Chicago (NWS Chicago) has issued a new technical report on two back-to-back extreme weather events that happened on July 27 and Aug. 11.
Earlier this summer, two fatal storms swept through northern Illinois and northwestern Indiana with devastating wind speeds exceeding 100 mph.
In Illinois, portions of DuPage, Cook, Kane, and Will counties were impacted by one or both of the storms.
Occurring just sixteen days apart, the successive bouts of high-speed wind resulted in widespread damage to trees and power infrastructure.
NWS Chicago’s senior meteorologist Brett Borchardt said that extreme wind events typically happen once every 1 to 2 years.
“For it to happen back-to-back,” Borchardt said, “and really over nearly the exact same area is almost unprecedented. We only have a handful of measured gusts over 100 miles an hour in our database.”
Borchardt said that technical reports like this are typically geared towards a meteorological audience and can include complex terminology.
Even so, he says broader interest from the public means future technical reports may utilize more accessible language.
NWS Chicago’s catalogue of technical reports can be found here.
