Possible derecho coming to Chicago tonight at rush hour. Very high winds and large hail.

The Storm Prediction Center has placed most of northern Illinois and northern Indiana under a rare "High Risk" outlook for late this afternoon and this evening.
This means a widespread wind damage event is a growing possibility for the Chicago area. In addition to straight-line winds in excess of 75mph, there is the potential for golf ball to baseball sized hail as well as a few strong tornadoes.
A preliminary search of records from the Storm Prediction Center indicates it's been nine years (5/30/2004) since the entire Chicago metro area was under a "High Risk" designation.
Prior to today, the last "High Risk" outlook issued by the Storm Prediction Center for any part of the country was over one year ago, on April 14, 2012.

http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/local&id=9136067

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Permalink Reply by Tony Adams on June 12, 2013 at 10:22pm

A derecho is a very serious thing. Here are some pics of the aftermath of one that ripped through my hood in early July 2011: https://plus.google.com/photos/112956551353316001216/albums/5628151... we lost a lot of mature trees, a few cars and buildings got wrecked. It was a big deal, but super localized. A block away it was like just a regular storm.

I rode today. There was a lot of weirdness on the roads.