Dixon residents wake up to havoc delivered by early morning storm

DIXON — Zachary Taylor was sleeping inside his home on Fourth Street when he was awakened by a loud “boom” around 2:30 a.m. early Friday morning.

“When I got up, all I saw was a bunch of flashing lights everywhere,” the 36-year-old who lives at 1111 W. Fourth Street said. “So I looked out the front window and I couldn’t see anything. So I grabbed my kids and my wife and we all ran to the basement.”

The “boom” probably was from the very large maple tree located across Van Buren Street to the west of Taylor’s home that was felled by an early morning storm that raced through that portion of Dixon, taking down trees and power lines.

The tree fell across electrical lines in front of Taylor’s house, pulling poles toward the home at a 45-degree angle and crushing his van that was parked on Van Buren Street.

But the family’s two-story home was spared from any extensive damage.

“If could have been a lot worse,” Taylor said. “As bad as it looks right now, I think it looks like we were blessed.”

A few blocks up the street, Dakota Murtha, 27, and Al Detig, 62, both of Dixon, didn’t waste any time helping residents along the storm’s path clear debris from homes and yards.

“We just decided to do what we could to help our neighbors,” said Murtha, who returned from the Marine Corps eight months ago. “There are a lot of people in this neighborhood who can’t go out and do this kind of work, so we decided to jump in and do it.”

Detig, who has a construction business, was busy sawing trunks of trees as Murtha dragged the branches and logs into piles. Both tried to take water breaks as temperatures climbed into the mid-90s before noon, with heat indexes above 100 degrees.

“We’re just doing what needs to be done,” Detig said.

Two strong and windy summer storms blew through the Sauk Valley early Friday morning, wreaking arboreal havoc but doing absolutely nothing to alleviate the heat.

When I got up, all I saw was a bunch of flashing lights everywhere. So I looked out the front window and I couldn’t see anything. So I grabbed my kids and my wife and we all ran to the basement.

—  Zachary Taylor, Dixon homeowner

The first downpour arrived around 2:20 a.m., hitting southeastern Ogle County and much of Lee County, said Tom Richter, Ogle County Emergency Management coordinator. The second came about 45 minutes later and passed through central Ogle County, he said.

“We had some downed [tree] limbs, downed power lines, but no significant damage,” Richter said. “But again, damage anything to an individual might be significant. That’s just kind of a common term we have.”

Roughly 600 people were without power in Ogle County starting at around 3 a.m., he said in an 11:30 a.m. interview. ComEd — which began restoration efforts in the middle of the night — had fewer than five customers without power by Friday evening, according to the utility company’s online outage map.

ExpandAutoplay

Image 1 of 8

A large tree was blown over and electric poles damaged by Friday's early morning storm at the corner of Van Buren and W. Fourth Street in Dixon. Zachary Taylor's home, pictured here, escaped major damage but the tree crushed his van. ComEd workers were dispatched to the area to repair damaged electrical lines and poles to restore power to residents in the area as temperatures climbed into the mid-90s. (Earleen Hinton/Shaw Media)

More than 3,500 people were out of power in Lee County at one point, said Kevin Lalley, Lee County Emergency Management Agency director. Power had been restored to all but about 256 customers by Friday evening, according to ComEd’s outage map. Most of those customers were in Dixon, the outage map showed.

Many residents on the west side of Dixon awoke to find yards full of leafy litter, branches blocking sidewalks and streets and no electricity, thanks to downed power lines.

“There was some damage, mostly in the Dixon and Ashton areas, and then some in southeastern Lee County,” Lalley said. “Mostly it was trees down, wires down. I haven’t gotten any reports of injuries, so that’s a good thing.”

That’s where the city street crews with wood chippers and other equipment were concentrating their cleanup efforts on Friday.

They got no break from the heat, though. Even though more rain was forecasted for Friday evening, it would come too late to alleviate temperatures that will feel like 105 to 110 degrees, said Kevin Doom, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Chicago.

“It does look like some pretty feisty storms went through your area,” Doom said, eyeing the radar numbers for Lee and Ogle counties.

The mess was made by winds that hit speeds of 50 to 60 mph, Doom said.

A speed of 58 mph is considered severe, and that would be consistent with the kind of damage seen in the two counties, where there were no major reports of damage, both he and Dixon city officials said.

Rainfall varied from a little more than an inch to a little less than two inches, depending on which side of the storms one was on, Doom said.

One storm system moved in from the southwest, and another from the northwest, and the two merged, but that’s a common occurrence and doesn’t mean the storms were stronger where they combined, he said.