Monday night storms cause flooding, road blockages across Sauk Valley

DIXON – Severe thunderstorms hit parts of the Sauk Valley on Monday, causing flash flooding from the Rock River, blocking roadways and leaving thousands without power, authorities said.

Among the areas hardest hit were Carroll and Ogle counties where ComEd reported, as of 7:30 a.m. Tuesday, about 68% of its Carroll County customers were without power and 17% of customers in Ogle County, according to the company’s outage map. By 2 p.m. Tuesday, the number of impacted customers was down to 64% in Carroll but up to 20% in Ogle.

Ogle County Sheriff Brian VanVickle said he had to call in six additional personnel and extra dispatchers to deal with the 97 weather-related service calls that poured into his department.

“Our first call came in around 7:19 p.m., and we were dealing with those calls until about midnight,” VanVickle said. “There was extensive damage primarily through the north half of the county, but the most significant damage was observed from Byron down towards Holcomb.”

Damage included utility complaints, obstructed roadways and homes with fallen trees on them. As of Tuesday morning, VanVickle said his department still had 18 open service calls.

Six tornado warnings were issued in Ogle County Monday night, but as of Tuesday afternoon, none had been confirmed in Ogle, Carroll, Whiteside or Lee counties, said Brian Pierce with the National Weather Service’s Quad Cities office.

Monday’s storm was classified by the Storm Prediction Center as a derecho – a broad and persistent windstorm linked to swiftly advancing showers and thunderstorms. It can generate wind speeds comparable to tornadoes, but these winds move uniformly along a straight path.

“It started out as single storms in central Iowa and grew into a line that moved across northern parts of Illinois and went into Indiana and parts of southern Michigan,” Pierce said. “Around Dubuque, we had wind speeds pushing 100 mph, and in northern Illinois, west of Rockford, we had reports of winds right around or just over 100 mph.”

National Weather Service teams were out Tuesday performing storm damage surveys, including at the site of a confirmed tornado that was seen in Davenport, Iowa, moving towards the river, Pierce said.

Whiteside County Sheriff John Booker said his department was lucky the storm left the county relatively unscathed outside of some flooding from the Rock River. ComEd’s Outage Map showed less than 5% of customers in Whiteside and Lee counties were affected.

The National Water Prediction Service is forecasting minor flooding along parts of the Rock River at Dixon, as it projects water levels to reach 16.7 feet by Wednesday before mostly sunny skies and highs in the 80s fill the rest of the week.