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It’s hard to even explain to anyone who has never experienced a Mid-West USA storm, being from the UK I had never experienced them myself until last year…

The storms we have out here are unbelievable, the other day I spent 4 hours watching TV coverage of a storm developing in western Illinois, it threw out 3 tornadoes, a whole load of rain, thousands of lightning strikes and winds of 70mph+ were “normal” compared to the speeds near the funnel clouds and tornado areas.

I now finally understand why The Weather Channel exists, it’s because if you live out in some of the suburbs, if you live out in the rural areas of Illinois, you can lose property, get injured or killed on a weekly basis in the storms here.

I’ve grown used to hearing lightning storms more harsh, loud and charged than anything I ever experienced in the UK happening on a daily basis during this time of year, it just seems normal to me now. It’s just so hard to explain it enough to the folks back home without them thinking I am exaggerating!

Thankfully for me, the city doesn’t suffer with great flooding problems. The lake is obviously very close and ready to take all the water, also the lower streets (there are two/three layers of streets below what looks like the “street level” used for traffic and sewerage) are a great assist in getting rid of the water. The worst thing we got from the storm the other night was that our chairs moved from one side of the balcony to the other…