In the News

Daily Herald, August 8, 2007

Gary O’Reilly’s spaniel puppy jumped on his chest during the worst of Tuesday’s ferocious, pre-dawn thunderstorm.

“He didn’t know what to do,” said O’Reilly, of Libertyville.

A few hours later, O’Reilly found the carpet soaked inside the Park Avenue Home Furnishings store he owns in town.

“It came in as far as 40 feet,” he said. “I’ve been here six years — never this.”

The lengthy, overnight storm soaked Lake County, flooding innumerable roads, yards and basements.

Wauconda was among the communities to receive the most rain, with more than 3 inches falling, said meteorologist Charles Mott of the National Weather Service. Some outlying suburbs in other counties got up to 6 inches of rain, he said.

Municipal public works and county transportation division crews set up detours and tried to relieve road flooding as quickly as they could, but they couldn’t stop some motorists from getting stranded in water.

A stretch of Sunset Avenue near Delaney Road in the Gurnee area was hit particularly hard, with between 2 and 3 feet of water covering the roadway Tuesday morning, said Kevin Kerrigan, engineer of maintenance for the Lake County transportation division.

Traffic was affected on stretches of Miller Road in North Barrington and Petite Lake Road near Antioch, too, Kerrigan said. Extra crews were called in overnight to set up detours and clear drains throughout the county, he said.

The rainfall varied throughout the county. Lake Zurich and Barrington each got about 2.7 inches, the weather service reported. Elsewhere, Antioch got 1.44 inches and Waukegan got 1.77 inches.

Most of the rain fell between midnight and 4 a.m. It was part of a storm front stretching from New England to Idaho, Mott said.

Mundelein officials measured more than 3 inches of rain Tuesday. More than 2 inches came down Saturday night, too, Public Works Director Ken Miller said.

“The ground is definitely saturated,” Miller said.

Nearly a dozen streets in the village were reported flooded during the storm, but all dried up once the rain subsided, Miller said.

The rain caused other problems in Mundelein. A large tree crashed onto the roadway on Shady Lane near Route 45 in the Diamond Lake neighborhood. No one was hurt.

Additionally, the railroad crossing signals for the Canadian National crossings at Park and Hawley streets failed, Miller said. Flaggers directed traffic through the area Tuesday morning, he said.

Yards at homes near Gages Lake and Hunt Club roads in the Gurnee area, flooded, too.

The usually busy Route 41 underpass beneath Route 176 in Lake Bluff flooded, as it often does, and was shut down, said Mike Warner, executive director of the Lake County Stormwater Management Commission.

The underpass floods, often after an hour or two of a heavy rain, because drainage grates there get covered by debris, Warner said. State officials once considered fixing the problem but haven’t, he said.

State Sen. Susan Garrett, a Democrat from Lake Forest, pledged Tuesday to meet with the Illinois Department of Transportation and investigate the situation.

Minor flooding was reported at some Vernon Hills parks, where playground equipment was surrounded by water, Public Works Supervisor Tom Olkowski said. None of the village’s streets flooded, however, he said.

“The detention ponds did what they had to do,” Olkowski said. “We escaped it.”

Despite the rain, both the Fox and Des Plaines rivers are below flood stage and aren’t expected to exceed potentially dangerous levels, Warner said. The Des Plaines River already was cresting late Tuesday morning, he said.

More rain is expected tonight, however, and officials were unsure how that could affect the rivers.

An intense storm like the one that struck Tuesday isn’t unusual for this time of year, Mott said.

“August is the month when our fronts start rolling through,” he said.