Parts of the Fox Valley area spent Thursday cleaning up after strong storms lashed the region Wednesday, including two confirmed tornadoes in Elgin and one in the Oswego and Boulder Hill area.
The National Weather Service Chicago confirmed Thursday that an EF-0 tornado touched down in Oswego and Boulder Hill Wednesday evening.
Kendall County Emergency Management Agency Director Roger Bonuchi said the tornado had winds between 75 and 85 mph and was on the lower end of the spectrum of tornado intensity.
The tornado began around 5:35 p.m. near Thompson Junior High School in Oswego and continued east to the Lincoln Memorial Park cemetery in Aurora before ending, Bonuchi said.
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“It was a weak tornado,” Bonuchi said. “It luckily caused no other damage other than some tree limbs and some facia torn from houses.”
In Elgin, the fast-moving line of storms that spawned two confirmed tornadoes there left five homes uninhabitable and 40 damaged, officials said.
The bulk of the affected area in Elgin was on or near Stoney Creek Drive in the Edgewater by Del Webb development on the city’s west side, where Rich Catey lives. He was home when the storm hit, he said.
“I was watching the storms on TV. There was nothing close to us, but then they gave a warning for here,” said Catey, whose garage door was badly damaged but his house habitable. “Boy, it wasn’t five minutes after the warning that there was stuff flying through the air.”
Catey and his wife ran into a closet, which is a safe room. “Within 30 seconds, it was over,” he said.
The National Weather Service confirmed two tornadoes touched down in Elgin.
The first Elgin tornado, an EF-1 with a maximum wind speed of 100 mph, started east of Route 47, headed north of Bowes Road and ended near the railroad west of the Villa Olivia Golf Course, said Kevin Donofrio, a weather service science and operations officer.
The second one began close to McDonald Road, near Crawford Road, and ended along Hopps Road, near Lisa Lane, Donofrio said. It was classified as an EF-0 with 85 mph winds, he said.
On Thursday afternoon, a meeting for Edgewater residents was attended by Elgin Mayor Dave Kaptain, Kane County Board Chair Corinne Pierog, state Sens. Cristina Castro and Donald DeWitte, and fire, police and emergency response representatives to discuss what help is available in the wake of the tornadoes.
“The support is here for you,” Kaptain said. “We want to get people back in their homes as quickly as possible.”
Wednesday’s tornadoes touched down about 6:30 p.m., Elgin Fire Deputy Chief Mike Rothecker said. The fire department started getting multiple 911 emergency calls and immediately started responding to the affected areas, he said. Ten fire agencies assisted Elgin, he said.
Twenty homes in the Edgewater subdivision and 25 in the neighboring area were damaged, Rothecker said.
No civilians or emergency personnel were injured, he said.
Dave Hoyne, who lives in the area near South Street and Shadow Hill Drive in Elgin, said he initially was watching the storm from the lower level of his home when he saw things change dramatically in a short span of time.
“It went from a very light rain to very intense rain very quickly, and then all of a sudden the phone started beeping (with) tornado warnings,” Hoyne said.
His wife, Kyla, ran upstairs to get their cat so they could take shelter in the basement.
“(Kyla) looked out the window, which faces toward the south, and said, ‘Oh, my god, look at that. It’s a tornado,'” he said.
He ran upstairs to join her. As he was pulling out his phone to take photos, he could see debris swirling around in the funnel, said Hoyne, who is the director of quality for Scot Forge in Spring Grove.
He said initially it looked like one tornado but as it moved east, he could see it break into two separate funnels. In the aftermath of the storm, he was surprised when the skies turned blue and the sun emerged, he said.
In Naperville, city workers spent part of Thursday hosing away the muck left on the steps beneath downtown Naperville’s Imburgia Fountain, the result of rainfall causing the DuPage River to overflow its banks.
The walkway below the brick staircase remained under several inches of water Thursday and much of the Riverwalk on both sides of the river’s west branch remained submerged after Naperville was hit with multiple rounds of thunderstorms Tuesday and Wednesday.
Over the course of those two days, water levels in the river rose more than two feet as north Naperville received 2.2 inches of rain, according to gauges at the Fawell Dam on the west branch of the DuPage River, south of McDowell Grove Forest Preserve.
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Gloria Casas is a freelance reporter for The Courier-News.
Freelance reporter Mike Danahey contributed.