Floods. House and trees, veggies and fruit all survived.

Did your sirens go off? Here in Grayslake, ours didn't go off, but my husband was upstairs and heard Round Lake Beach going off and yelled at me on his way down stairs. Shit started hitting the house, power gone and then our phones started alerting. It was scary.

Stay safe.

I have driven past the corner where the restaurant was destroyed, near Rochelle. And I am close to the areas in Lee County that were hit hard.

I went to the mall in Sterling yesterday, for the first time since the roof was blown off part of the mall. There are still many stores that have not reopened. The chain stores will recover. I am worried for some of the independent small business owners there. I am friendly with a lady who just reopened her candle and gift shop two days ago, after repairing the flood damage. I hope she will be all right. They operate on such a small profit margin.

We have been hit hard all over this area. I feel lucky to have escaped, and hope it stays that way!

Good luck with your repairs and cleanup!

Sorry to hear about your trees, but at least you are safe. We were in the basement for about 20-30 minutes. Was interesting rounding up all of our cats and getting them down there. We couldn't even hear the sirens, though, we knew about the tornado warning from the weather app on our cell phones.