The Fox Valley area was cleaning up Wednesday after strong storms uprooted trees, knocked over signs and damaged some homes Tuesday evening.
Devon Billeter, a resident of the Pepper Valley subdivision in Geneva, is staying with her parents after the storm lifted the roof of her house before slamming it back down again, collapsing part of her celling and sending parts of her roof into nearby trees.
She said the worst of the storm came through at around 7 p.m. Tuesday and speculated that it could have been a tornado or a microburst.
“It felt like you were in the middle of an earthquake because the whole house was shaking,” Billeter said on Wednesday morning, standing in her back yard among the debris pulled from her house. “You could hear the swirling. That was strange. It was a different sort of wind.”
Geneva city officials said Wednesday morning that Billeter’s subdivision felt the brunt of the storm, and that city Fire and Public Works departments are assessing the damage.
As of Wednesday afternoon, no injuries or deaths related to the storm have been reported across the Fox Valley, according to city and county officials.
Officials from Aurora and Batavia said there was no significant damage reported in their cities.
Undersheriff Amy Johnson, public information officer for the Kane County Sheriff’s Department, said the storm uprooted trees, knocked down power lines and caused minor to medium damage to buildings in the county.
The National Weather Service currently has three teams out in the Chicago area investigating potential tornado touchdowns during Tuesday’s storm, according to Meteorologist Kevin Doom at the National Weather Service office in Romeoville. He said that tornadoes may have set down in an area near North Aurora to Batavia and an area near St. Charles to Campton Hills, but they are still under investigation.
The storm also brought around a quarter- to a half-inch of rain to the Fox Valley with top wind speeds between 55 and 65 mph, and about an inch of hail was reported in Maple Park and in western DuPage County, Doom said.
In Geneva, the most significant damage was sustained on three blocks, including Essex Court, Deerfield Way and Cambridge Drive, according to a statement on the city’s website.
Other damage occurred, albeit more minor, in an area generally located from Country Club Place to Randall Road and from Williamsburg Avenue to the Union Pacific-West Railway tracks in Geneva, officials said.
The city is estimating about 30 to 40 trees were either damaged or uprooted in the impacted areas due to the strong winds. Light standards also were knocked down at Kaneville and Randall roads in Geneva, officials said.
Preliminary assessments from the Geneva Fire Department indicate eight homes suffered moderate to heavy damage to roofs, trees hitting homes, broken windows, fallen fences and more, according to officials. That number is expected to increase as the fire department continues its investigation.
The city was working late Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning to clear roads and driveways on and near Pepper Valley Drive, according to Billeter. The road was closed from Deerfield Way to Cambridge Drive until around 11:30 a.m. Wednesday.
Billeter said her home on Essex Court is now uninhabitable after wind pushed open her garage door, lifted up her roof and slammed it back down again, collapsed her patio roof and sent her children’s wooden play and swing set, which was chained to the ground, flying over the fence and into the neighbor’s yard.
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When the storm hit, she was upstairs in the master bedroom with the window cracked, she said.
“When they tell you to go in your bathtub downstairs, you should probably do that,” Billeter said. “If my kids had been with me, we would have been down there, absolutely. I don’t take risks with them.”
Her children were staying with her ex-husband in St. Charles, where they received no storm damage, she said.
Trees from her neighbor’s yard also fell into her back yard and her driveway, Billeter said. Geneva work crews removed the tree from her driveway, something she said she was thankful for.
Mike Cornick, who lives across the street from Billeter on Essex Court, said his house was spared most of the damage his neighbors were dealing with from the storm. With only some loose shingles and damaged siding, Cornick said he was lucky to have only minor damage.
On Wednesday morning, a house next to Billeter and across the street from Cornick had a number of boarded up windows after they shattered during the storm, according to Cornick. Several other houses in the area had destroyed fences, shattered windows, damaged siding, loose shingles and fallen trees.
Waubonsee Community College’s campus in Sugar Grove was also hit hard by the storm.
“The extent of the damage is still being assessed. Trees are down and glass on one exterior door was shattered, but no injuries have been reported,” said Stephanie Wennmacher, executive director of Marketing and Communications at the college, in a press release Wednesday morning. “Power was restored to the Sugar Grove campus at 1:20 a.m. early Wednesday morning.”
Officials said all Waubonsee campuses were operating normally on Wednesday.