Wednesday, June 17, 2026
We were monitoring the severe storms on the evening of June 17th, 2026. Severe storms had been predicted for a couple of days, and the weather forecasters were saying that there was a good possibility of tornadoes. But if you live in east central Illinois this happens a couple of times a week this time of year. So you pay attention, but tornadoes always hit someone else.
As we watched the radar, we saw a large storm approaching. The wind picked up and soon it was dumping rain and the wind had picked up to around 50 or 60 mph. Since we’re used to storms with wind like that, we were just watching out the window. When we started to hear and feel debris hitting the house, we ran for the basement and hunkered down there. The noise was tremendous and we could hear all kinds of things happening around us, trees, debris hitting the house, and just general chaos. After about 90 seconds, it was over, and all became quiet. Very quiet.
We slowly exited from the basement, afraid of what we would see. The house was still intact, but looking outside it was a war zone. All of our large canopy of old oak trees was gone. A tree had hit the corner of the house by the garage and the roof shingles were gone over the garage. There was a large hole in the roof of the garage. There was debris everywhere. The power was out.
Since it was just about the longest day of the year, it was still light out at 7:15 pm, about the time we emerged. Even though it was still raining, we had time to walk around and survey the damage.
We weren’t new to this. Three years ago, almost to the day, we had a 110 mph derecho blow through and it did $90,000 worth of damage to our house. This time, the house seemed to take less of a hit, but your three acres of trees took a huge hit. We only have a fraction of the trees that survived, with many old oaks snapped off halfway up. It literally looked like a war zone.
Due to the garage damage, we struggled to open the garage door, as it had been bent and smashed by something. But we got it open and were able to get the cars out, as we feared the ceiling caving in from the water that had come through the hole in the roof. Later, the ceiling did cave in and further bent to garage door. Now it was stuck in the up position, where it remains until replaced.
We got out the backup batteries, plugged in some lamps, and went to bed with no power, ending a day we won’t forget.