Summer Storm 2010
It was a nice summer Saturday here in West Lafayette, Alright it was a bit warmer than nice, but it was not that hot, sticky like Georgia-in-the-summer-time muggy. So it was nice relatively speaking. The heavy storms were due on Sunday, so all was good.
Around about 6:50 my wife was surfing the Internet and said, "Oh, it looks like we should have some potentially severe weather here at about 7:10." So I thought, "ya cool, the wind will blow, we'll get some very cool thunder and lightening, and it will rain a bucket or two and be done."
Well about 7:10 or so the wind, lightening with it's accompanying thunder, and rain came, right on schedule. It was hard to tell how string the winds were until we went into our front room. Then we could see the trees leaning mightily to the south, which was in and of itself a bit odd. We were being introduced to a "wet macroburst" which are not all common for our area, but obviously can occur.
A macroburst is a localized column of sinking air measuring more than 2.5 miles across that is capable of creating wind speeds in excess of 75 mph If you are interested, there is a very well done technical description of microbursts over at Wikipedia.
The storm dumped nearly two inches of rain in under an hour, streets throughout the greater Lafayette area were flooded, the Dancing in the Streets festival in downtown Lafayette was shut down early, and of course our public services were kept very busy.
The storm bent sign posts and downed power lines taking out power for thousands in Tippecanoe County. Duke energy responded well but some areas in New Chauncey were without power for more than 20 hours until Sunday evening.
For New Chauncey, we were fortunate that we did not get the stronger winds that the northern parts of West Lafayette received.
That said, our neighborhood did not miss out on some of the damage as trees snapped and landed on homes, up rooting yards and gardens,
and creating a general mess throughout the neighborhood. City crews worked quickly to remove debris from the streets and roadways in New Chauncey and throughout the City of West Lafayette.
The Clean Up.
Neighbors helped neighbors with the clean-up: cutting and moving downed tree limbs, clearing storm drains of debris, and patching up roof damage.
The good news is that it was not a tornado and that there were no major injuries reported from the storms. Just another new weather experience for us non-native West Lafayette-ian's
What is that they say about Indiana weather, if you don't like the weather, wait 10 minutes and it will change - sure enough it did. Sunday even brought another not frequent sighting: an ice cream truck cruising the streets of New Chauncey.... go figure...
