National Weather Service to assess damage from storms, tornadoes last week
Teams from the National Weather Service on Sunday will be surveying damage caused by severe storms that brought tornado touchdowns to the Chicago area and other parts of northern Illinois last week.
The teams will be focusing on central Cook County and areas south of the Kankakee River.
One of the sites on which the teams are set to focus is the southwest Chicago suburb of Bridgeview, where the roofs of buildings in an apartment complex were ripped off by the storms during the storms Thursday night.
Piles of debris stretched almost into the street. Different angles showed parts of the roof of a building hitting people's balconies.
It is believed that a number of people were displaced.
CBS News Chicago talked with the National Weather Service team responsible for the surveys.
"One is to assess portions of southern Cook County and into the city of Chicago," said Jake Petr of the National Weather Service. "It'll be especially challenging there, because there were two days in a row where there was large footprint of straight-line wind damage across those areas, so determining any localized tornadoes embedded within that line will be quite challenging."
National Weather Service teams on Sunday will also assess suburbs such as Hickory Hills and Justice, as well as areas farther south into Indiana.
Officials said the damage assessment could take several days.
As of Saturday evening, the National Weather Service has confirmed at least 11 tornado touchdowns on Thursday, June 11, including an EF-3 tornado in Kouts, Indiana, an EF-3 tornado in Streator, Illinois, an EF-2 tornado in Merrillville, Indiana, an EF-1 tornado in Bartlett, Illinois, an EF-1 tornado near Dwight, Illinois, an Ef-1 tornado in Wenona, Illinois, an EF-0 tornado in St. John, Indiana, An EF-0 tornado in Cedar Lake, Indiana, and an EF-0 tornado from near Schneider to near Hebron, Indiana, an EF-1 tornado near Boswell, Indiana, and an EF-1 tornado east of Ludlow, Illinois, with most of this tornado's path in Champaign County in the National Weather Service's Lincoln area, but it crossed over into Ford County before it ended.
This came after a round of intense storms that brought down trees on Wednesday night.
Still another round of storms pounded the area Saturday night into Sunday morning, likewise bringing down trees and causing flooding. Some streets in Bridgeview were still without power early Sunday morning, and lights were flashing at intersections due to what was believed to be damage from the Saturday night storms.
