It was a misty & foggy morning today. Silent & serene. A relaxing ride to work out some of the kinks & stiffness after this past weekend’s Triple Triathlon.

Lots of clouds this morning. A blanket covering the city.

By the end of my ride, the blanket of clouds was passing through. You could literally see the “edge” of the stormfront as it left leaving blue skies in its wake.

Looking to the North…

Looking to the South…

And the middle section. Blue skies & white clouds… wafting above the layer of darkness.
You know how on the evening news the weatherman presents the map with a bold dashed line showing you where the edge of the storm mass is?… well, this morning I think I actually saw that dashed line up in the sky!!!

Okay, so to see the real perspective of the crazy “column” of clouds…
here’s a couple panorama shots that shows it much better!

The skies were clear today while I was out biking. But then out of no where, seriously, no where… this hug “column” of a cloud formation blew in and obliterated the sun. It was strange. The rest of the sky was still clear. Except for this tall column of white puffy clouds. What;s up with that?! And just as quickly as it popped up, it dissipated without any rain or storm?!

Okay, so here’s a crazy cool video that shows the microburst storm that rolled through yesterday. The video was filmed at Montrose Beach here in Chicago. You’ll notice that the majority of the storm is passing north of Chicago. Yep, “conveniently” right where we were in Evanston. Smack dab in the middle of the storm!!!

Click here to watch the YouTube video.

It was a crazy day at the Evanston Lakeshore Art Festival yesterday.
It was another beautiful day until a huge storm rolled through… here’s what it looked like AFTER it blew through and made it out over the Lake.

They announced shortly before 3:00pm that they needed to close the fair and evacuate the park of customers. They all left quickly, and the artists were left to fend for themselves. We were still in our tent as the torrential rains, gale force winds and quarter-sized hail pummeled the fair.

Luckily, we survived the storm with no damage. Just wet & dirty with a lot of pots on the ground… and a green stamped platter that somehow “showed up” in my neighbor’s tent?! Ironically, nothing broke during the storm, but the very first customer AFTER the storm knocked over a miniature vase!

Other artists didn’t fair so well with damaged tents and a couple of them leaving in ambulances. Hopefully the artist directly across from us is doing better after getting a huge gash on his leg from a big piece of broken glass. EMT’s tended to him on-site and he was taken to the hospital for medical attention. There were also tents that collapsed during the storm, like this one of a potter from Seagrove, North Carolina.

During my short drive home from Evanston, there were a lot of trees down.
Uprooted or smashed & broken. Obvious signs that a lot of crazy weather had passed through!

Special thanks to everyone who helped out during the aftermath…
and those who checked in to make sure we were all fine after that crazy storm!!!

We drove home from Peoria in the late afternoon hours. We were hoping to make good time and quite possibly enjoy a beautiful sunset along the way. About halfway home, the sky took a turn and huge clouds swooped in. Dark, impending clouds… and you could see where the storm was dropping huge amounts of rain. And the cloud was headed our way.

As the cloud passed over us, the sky got suddenly dark & gloomy. But also made for an incredible sunset. Almost looked more like a forest fire than a sunset?!

And here’s Cousin Kim enjoying the sunset, with that fiery orange glow on her face,
and trying to get that “perfect” stormy sunset photo!

Soon enough the clouds to ur right were being taken over by the large storm cloud.
It was pretty cool to watch them “mix it up”… blue skies, white clouds & dark storm clouds!

But then soon enough, almost as quick as it blew in, the storm cloud moved on…
and we were treated to a “second” beautiful sunset!!!

Well, you know it was too good to be true. And yes, sometimes the weather forecasters get it right. Today the storms rolled through as predicted. Incredible dark clouds, huge gusts of winds and the promise of thunder & lightning was enough for us to evacuate the festival grounds. While most people scrambled for cover… I kinda enjoyed the crazy weather, grabbed my camera and got a few cool shots of the incoming storm clouds.

And huge clouds covering the Main Stage…

And the clouds behind me over the main midway as we made our way to our Crew Compound and the staff exit.

And then I hopped on my bike and pedaled to the safety of my hotel room for the night. Of course I had to stop one more time… as the dark clouds were gaining on us and Dover International Speedway was in its path.

Can’t wait to see what muddy mess tomorrow brings!!!

So nice to have the sun back. Blue skies. White clouds. Gorgeous.
Just don’t look too closely at the super-saturated, mud-covered grounds.
Mud everywhere you look down… so keep looking up to the skies!

Big clouds rolling on over The Woodlands. We’ve already had a lot of rain while we’ve been here. What’s another storm??? These clouds were pretty dramatic & imposing… luckily they blew over almost as quickly as they blew in.