A little note to any moderators reading this: what the hell is this rating system here for anyway? I haven't rated anyone and won't. It's just a toy for trolls. As you can see, someone has downgraded me from a "5" to a "2" in the last day or so...and I didn't do anything.

My area got the worst of neither of the major storms that have come through here since last Friday (when we had the bow echo). Last night the area was blanketed in severe storms for several hours, and where I work it was dark from around 5:00 p.m. all the way until just after sunset, around 8:45 p.m. I've never seen conditions like that last so long. But outside of that all we got was intense lightning, a downpour, a few puffs of wind, and all kinds of interesting clouds that looked like scraps of decaying thunderstorms skidding by. I have to admit that they were skidding FAST, though, and in the opposite direction that the storms were heading in.

Other parts of the area weren't so lucky. In some places old trees were snapped like proverbial toothpicks and at least one entire roof was blown off of an office complex. Urban flooding closed an expressway for almost 10 hours; out in the suburbs, one expressway was covered with debris.

People did report seeing funnel clouds (at the leading edge of the storms?), but mind you, for some reason the NWS is loathe to use the "T" word in this area. I have no doubt the damage will be declared "straight-line wind." I keep thinking of a minor tornado in 2006 that wasn't recognized even after someone videoed it heading out into Lake Michigan. So may be the case here, even if someone does come up with a video (and I have no doubt they will).

All I saw was a lot of scud. One cloud was perfectly cone-shaped, but it wasn't rotating. The rest were rather wispy and raggedy. Only a few clouds had a sort of tumbling motion, and that was during the very first storm that came through around 5:00. That storm was pretty impressive in some ways -- clouds colliding with clouds and CG lightning, but nothing much actually happened.

All in all, not a very interesting night in my particular corner of Chicago, except for that darkness. In other areas, not so lucky. But I'm glad no one got injured.

Good ol'...well I won't give the name of the company. Anyway, last Wednesday I came home from work and discovered my (land-line) phones were dead and my DSL was out . Yes, I did pay the bill! As of this writing (Sunday) the phones are STILL dead and the DSL has come back up and gone out again over and over. When it is working, it runs as slowly as dial-up and won't permit me to report the problem to the company .

I'm putting this all here so that my friends on this site will know why if I disappear for a while. I am going with another company this week and am going completely wireless for the first time in my life. Wish me well, please .

I found a chase partner -- a friend who is a photographer and has been along on many chases herself. Of course we are still looking for someone with better knowledge to help us not get killed, especially since we'll be chasing in a Saturn. She likes to chase around DeKalb, IL. We'll do that when the weather fires up. Right now it feels like January.