Powerful storm rips through Batavia leaving a trail of destruction
BATAVIA, Ill. — A powerful storm swept through Batavia, causing significant damage just after 2:30 p.m. Sunday afternoon.
The storm brought damaging winds and hail, resulting in multiple trees down, branches and limbs toppled over onto houses and cars and even mailboxes ripped out of the ground.
Winds reached about 80 miles per hour in Batavia, which is on the Kane and DuPage County line.
'We rushed to the basement and stayed away from the windows. We instantly heard all of the cracking around us. We've never seen weather like this before,' Nick Duda said.
Duda says his family lost most of their trees and some windows in the storm, and that their power is totally out.
Those caught behind the wheel as the storm unfolded were faced with very low visibility on the roads as power lines were also snapped by the wind.
Crews are currently out fixing power lines and beginning the clean-up process. There are 50 reported outages in the area affecting around 3,000 customers.
In true community fashion, neighbors are already out with chainsaws offering a helping hand to those chopping up limbs and branches that have fallen down.
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