Tom Smith

Two hours of on-and-off tornado sirens, and we ate dinner in the basement. But everyone is okay, except I have a nasty scratch from when the cat got startled.

It was a wild weather night here in the Chicagoland area but the worst seems to be heading north and east over Lake Michigan.

There was an hour there when the operators at Fermilab hid in the basement (during the tornado warning).

Luke and I are fine, Matt and Tara are ok but lost power and don't know when they're getting it back.

A lot of trees lost limbs and some trees went down, but I never lost power, although I lost my internet connection for a fair while.

My cats and myself are OK. We lost power about 8:40 last night (in the middle of my MMORPG group activity) and got it back about half an hour ago. I've been catching up on my usual activities and email since. A tree fell on the power lines. I met some ComEd people and they said a few hours. Then my neighbor said he spoke to some and they said "tomorrow if we're lucky". Well thank FSM I was right. When the power came on I went outside and gave him a Nelson-style "HA-HA!" because I was so happy. He took it in good humor since all of us were worried about flooding.

Slightly damp last night, but all right. I'm nowhere near the two sections of Louisville that were hit the hardest.