Kane County communities assessing damage following Monday night storms

Kane County was hit with damage causing storms for the second night in a row as a slew of tornadoes battered northern Illinois Monday evening.

The National Weather Service confirmed Tuesday afternoon that Sunday night’s storms spawned EF-0 tornadoes in Elburn and St. Charles.

Several tornadoes were spotted during Monday’s storm, including one in Sugar Grove, leaving dozens without power and damage reported in several areas of Kane County.

The Kane County Sheriff’s Office reported tornado sightings at Route 47 and I-88, along with “multiple other locations” and advised residents to stay in place for safety via their Facebook page.

“Please remain vigilant in all areas of Kane County with the continued severe weather. Still remain in shelter until told otherwise.” The Kane County Sheriff’s Office said in a Facebook post. “Our dispatch center along with the Kane County Office of Emergency Management (OEM) are reporting multiple tornadoes in and around our communities thus far.”

ComEd reported that more than 1,300 Kane County customers were still without power as of 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday.

Campton Township storm damage

The Campton Township Highway District is hosting a special post-storm pickup the week of July 29, Commissioner Sam Gallucci said Tuesday, following a second night of storms with heavy damage.

“We had trees down two nights in a row,” Gallucci said. “Somewhere around 35 to 40 trees were down, across roads, and we’ve been busy with that, crews working on clearing trees from roads. And private property had a lot of trees down.”

While there is no official word that a tornado touched down in Campton Township, Gallucci said the cornfield in back of their office at 5N790 Illinois Route 47 had straight line damage.

“It looks like a tank was driven through the cornfield,” Gallucci said. “The corn is completely crushed.”

The National Weather Service’s Romeoville office has teams out surveying the area for storm damage and evidence of tornado touch-downs, said meteorologist Zachary Yack.

“This is the first I’ve heard of it,” Yack said of the flattened cornfield in Campton Township.

“It was just crazy. The winds were sideways, my car was blowing sideways on the road and then it was just darkness.”

—  Stephanie Vanik , Sugar Grove resident

The weather service has 29 areas of interest and teams will be investigating not only Kane, but Kendall, Grundy, Will, DuPage and Cook counties, Yack said.

“It’s basically from Rockford down to northwest Indiana,” Yack said. “We are looking at several areas of rotation where radar warnings went out and several areas of straight line wind damage.”

He said he hoped the weather service would have some preliminary information to release Tuesday night, but a full report will take days.

In the meantime, Campton Township and Campton Hills residents should follow the guidelines for brush pickup, having branches and tree limbs in organized piles in front of their property.

The limbs and branches should not be more than 10 feet long and if the highway district has to use equipment to remove the limbs or branches, it will not be responsible for potential lawn damage.

Geneva deals with power outages

In Geneva, the Public Works Department brought the Delnor and Western Avenue substations back online at 1:14 a.m. Tuesday, officials announced

ComEd is still investigating what caused their feeder line – which may be outside the Geneva city limits – to drop to the city’s substations.

The Monday night storm damaged an additional six trees, according to the announcement.

Public Works hopes to bring 100 customers, located west of Geneva High School, back online later Tuesday or by Wednesday.

Sugar Grove residents on cleanup duty

Max Ecks was working at the BP gas station at Cross Street and Route 47 in Sugar Grove when the storm came through Monday evening. He said the power went out around 9 p.m. and wasn’t restored until 6 a.m. Tuesday morning.

Ecks said the entire block lost power and it was too dark to see the storm clouds coming through, but he witnessed a transformer “blowing up” across the street shortly after the power went out. While the station couldn’t operate without power, four people came in to seek shelter from the storm and stayed for nearly an hour, including one Sugar Grove police officer.

Sugar Grove resident Stephanie Vanik was outside cleaning tree branches and assessing damages Tuesday morning in the front yard of her home on McCannon Street. She said while the storm dropped several branches on her family’s vehicles and the fence around their property, they were lucky to have minimal damage to their home and for everyone in the neighborhood to be unharmed.

Vanik was driving home when the storm started.

“It was just crazy,” Vanik said. “The winds were sideways, my car was blowing sideways on the road and then it was just darkness.”

Vanik said once she got home, she and her kids took shelter in the basement for about 40 minutes until the storm subsided. She said there were crews out clearing roads and chopping down trees in her neighborhood until after 2 a.m. Tuesday morning.

Vanik said they lost power around 9:30 p.m. Monday and their home was without power for about 11 hours. She said with all the rain, her family had to drain their sump pump by hand using pots and pans to carry the water outside to keep their basement from flooding.

“For all that considered, we got super super lucky that there’s not more significant damage,” Vanik said. “Everyone’s safe, so that’s good. Everyone is just trying to help each other out and get cleaned up and get functioning.”

Sugar Grove resident Kristyn Crawford had several family members and neighbors over helping remove a large tree branch from the roof of her home on Bastian Drive Tuesday morning.

Crawford said she and her kids took shelter in the basement when the sirens started, while her husband watched from a window at the front of their home. She said their power was out from around 9:30 p.m. until nearly 6 a.m. Tuesday morning.

On Tuesday morning, Crawford’s husband was on the roof of their garage trimming the branch with a chainsaw, while others helped from the ground.

Crawford said they are still assessing damages, but the branch that landed on their garage punctured a hole in the roof and the storm destroyed a batting cage that was in their yard.