For a time Monday, scores of new rivers snaked across the Chicago region, among them great waterways called the Dan Ryan, the Stevenson and the Skyway.
Spring storms had turned the sky malevolent shades of black, green and gray, then dumped inch upon inch of rain onto roads and into sewers that couldn’t drain it fast enough.
When the sewers backed up, so did traffic. Roads became canals, cars became flotsam, and commutes became odysseys.
The historic downpour flooded parts of the southwest and south suburbs and the Far South Side of Chicago on Monday afternoon, leaving streets up to 4 feet deep in water, closing parts of the Dan Ryan and Stevenson Expressways and Interstate Highway 57, and backing floodwater into hundreds of basements.
The 9.1-mile Calumet leg of the Deep Tunnel, which holds 1.85 million gallons of water, was filled for the first time.
The Des Plaines River was so full at Lockport that the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, an extension of the South Branch of the Chicago River, had difficulty draining into the river, said Barbara Rumsey, spokeswoman for the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District.
The heaviest measured rainfall was in Burr Ridge, where 4.63 inches fell before 3 p.m.
“Amazing,” said meteorologist Mark Stern, who at 3 p.m. had measured just .9 of inch at his personal weather station outside his Vernon Hills home.
More thunderstorms are forecast for Tuesday morning and afternoon, according to the Central Weather Service.
“An astounding 3 to 3 1/2 inches of rain fell within two hours, causing basement flooding throughout the city, especially on the South Side,” said Mayor Richard Daley.
“This is the highest rainfall . . . in two hours that we’ve ever had in this area. This exceeds anything ever recorded before. So it’s an act of God,” said Tom Fuller, president of the Water Reclamation District.
In a scene like ones played out countless times Monday, Edith Johnson was rolling along Plainfield Road in Darien when she suddenly realized that she was no longer on a street, but in a pond.
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After her motor stalled-a delightful turn of events to the two grandchildren she was driving to piano lessons-she waited several minutes for yellow-slickered city workers to push her scuttled Honda into dry dock outside a hot dog stand.
“The basement was flooded, then this,” she said, her hair damp. “It is not a great day.”
She was speaking for many.
A warm front loitered over northern Illinois all day, time and again creating the warm-air/cold-air collisions that make rain. Wave after wave of storms dumped from 1 to nearly 5 inches of rain across the area.
The rain overwhelmed sewers and created a fast-rising tide that temporarily closed several roads, including the Ryan at 87th Street, before it began receding into culverts and sewer lines.
How high was this tide? Even the elevated Skyway was flooded.
At their fiercest during midday, the storms inspired reports of a funnel cloud in the greenish-gray sky over Westmont. Although the funnel cloud spun off into a benign wisp, the storm held other dangers.
Lightning slightly injured one man in West Chicago and sparked at least two small fires, one that caused $10,000 in damage to an Aurora apartment and another that damaged a Carol Stream home.
In the West Chicago incident, a worker grasping a metal rod was knocked to the ground and slightly injured by a lightning “splash”-an indirect jolt that can occur within several hundred feet of a lightning strike.
“He saw a bright light, and the next thing he knew he was on the ground,” said Dr. Joseph Giordano, an emergency room physician who treated the man, identified as David Bentley, 32, of Ohio.
Although he was listed in good condition, Bentley was “dazed and slow to respond,” Giordano said. “He looked like a fellow who saw God.”
In Blue Island, the weight of the rainwater apparently caused the collapse of a domed roof above a 50,000-square-foot warehouse at Parco Foods Inc. at 139th and Chatham Streets.
After the collapse, officials at the cookie company couldn’t even get into the warehouse to assess the damage. “We can’t get back there because of the flooding,” said Robert Devereaux, a company executive.
In Calumet Park’s police station, which was hemmed in by water, calls came as fast as the rain.
Dispatcher Joan Kurzeja talked to one resident, repeating what became a harried emergency worker’s refrain: “Listen. Some have got it up over their dryers. Some people got it waist-deep in their basements. We had a dog stranded on a roof. There’s nothing we can do. It’s an act of God.”
Burr Ridge’s neighbors in Darien had it almost as bad. Plainfield Road become a four-lane river that swept over its banks, flowed across a grassy parkway, and literally lapped at the front door of City Hall.
“The water was 2 or 3 feet deep outside the door and was just pouring in through the bottom,” said Tim Gagen, Darien’s city manager.
The rainwater, carrying landscape mulch and gravel, rose to about 3 inches inside the City Council chambers and the Police Department’s 911 communications center, both located in the basement.
The 911 service was switched immediately through Downers Grove’s system, but a Darien City Council meeting scheduled for Monday was canceled, Gagen said.
Nearby, employees at the Factory Card Outlet were awash in troubles of their own.
Shortly after noon, a small waterfall began pouring over the top of the store’s back door, threatening hundreds of boxes of stock.
“The gutters couldn’t handle it, and it had to go somewhere,” said Chris Ewert, the store’s manager, who abruptly cut the conversation short.
“A truck just pulled up,” she explained, “and we have to move 400 boxes.”
In Chicago, the intersection of 95th Street and Stony Island Avenue was under 4 feet of water for a while.
On the Southeast Side, 3.55 inches of rain was measured at 95th Street and Baltimore Avenue, and 3.5 inches at 400 E. 130th St., according to the Water Reclamation District.
Sixteen viaducts flooded on the South Side.
The North Side and the northern and northwestern suburbs got very wet but were spared serious flooding.
Only .46 of an inch of rain fell at O’Hare International Airport during the afternoon storm. Nevertheless, 250 inbound and outbound flights were canceled, and the Red Cross and Salvation Army were looking after several hundred travelers who expected to be stranded overnight.
The Dan Ryan was closed north and south of 87th Street between 3 and 7 p.m. Southbound I-57 was also closed in two places from 3 to 7 p.m.
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As a result, Chicago police in four districts were kept overtime and the police summer mobile task force for the lakefront was diverted to the South Side to help with the diverted traffic and assist motorists stranded in viaducts.
The hardest hit area in Chicago was from 79th Street south to the city limits and from Cicero Avenue to the lake. Raw sewage was reported coming up through storm drains into the basements of some homes, said Ald. William Beavers (7th).
In many parts of Chicago and in the older, close-in suburbs, storm and sanitary sewers are combined so that when floodwaters back up into basements, they can carry raw sewage, Rumsey said.
Sewers can handle only half an inch of rain an hour, she said, so when the amount is greater, it collects in the streets and basements.
Frank Dalton, general superintendent of the Water Reclamation District, said the Cal-Sag Channel would normally dump excess floodwaters into Lake Michigan to ease the strain on the South Side, but the lake was higher than the river, so the locks had to be kept closed.
“The amount of water that fell here is 45 billion gallons,” Dalton said. “The (Deep) Tunnel itself can only handle 1.5 billion gallons.” He was referring to the total capacity of the mainstream Deep Tunnel, which runs from Wilmette to Hodgkins, combined with the much smaller Calumet tunnel leg. “In order to handle the rest of the problem, we need to build those reservoirs we’ve been talking about for the last 20 years. We need the political support,” Dalton said.
Two reservoirs have been designed on paper for Thornton and McCook, which together could hold 45 billion gallons of floodwater, Rumsey said. They have not been funded. They would cost $400 million.