Tornado Terror in Round Lake Illinois: A Close Encounter with Nature's Wrath

It was a warm and calm August afternoon. I remember I was sitting in my living room when I noticed that the sky had begun to change colors and there was an odd stillness in the air. Growing up in Round Lake, I had always known about the possibility of a tornado. In school we always had tornado drills and during the summers there would always be at least one tornado warning but nothing ever too serious happened. At most we would experience really high winds and there would be a couple branches that fell. But that day was different. It was a gut feeling that you get when you know something bad is about to happen. Surely enough I turned on the news and I saw that there was a tornado warning for my county. After that, things began to escalate pretty quickly. The meteorologist warned to take cover, the sky grew darker, and the winds began to pick up. I remember hearing the blaring sound of the National Weather Service on my TV warning that the storm was coming. A couple of moments later the tornado siren went off. I remember that was the first time I had seen my mom actually scared meanwhile my dad tried to keep both of us calm. But my mom had told me that this was the first time she heard the tornado siren go off since living in Round Lake. The tornado lasted from 8:38 pm to 8:53 pm. And it was indeed the first tornado to have touched down in Lake County since April 18, 2002. The tornado that hit Round Lake was an F1, which on the Fujita Damage Intensity Scale was a Moderate tornado with winds ranging from 73-112mph. This type of tornado causes moderate damage including peeling surface off roofs, overturning or pushing mobile homes off their foundation, and pushing moving cars off of roads. Sure enough this was very true. The tornado that touched ground was approximately 3 minutes away from my house which explained why we were able to see such strong winds but we never actually saw the tornado. It's damages were not deadly, but the roof of the Pizza Place near my house was completely blown off, there was a lot of fallen trees with exposed roots near my house. There was also broken windshields due to falling branches and in some places the electricity had gone out. The next morning we began to see clean-up crews around town and we learned that the tornado had actually slipped under the radar and had touched the ground before the siren had gone off. Meaning that the people near the tornado site didn't know it was coming before. This tornado was able to sneak through because the quickly-developing supercell thunderstorm that caused the tornado formed at a low level. So low that the radar station did not detect it forming due to the curvature of the earth. In the end the twister that hit Round Lake had carved a path 7.5 miles long and about 300 yards wide at different points with estimated peak winds of 90 to 100 miles per hour. This was for sure one of the most surprising and scariest moments in my hometown.  

Resources: 

https://www.weather.gov/bmx/fujitascale#:~:text=(F1)%20Moderate%20tornado%20(73,autos%20pushed%20off%20the%20roads. 

https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/lake-county-news-sun/ct-lns-lake-county-tornado-sirens-st-0805-20150804-story.html 

https://wgntv.com/morning-news/leshock-value/pizza-place-reopens-in-round-lake-after-destroyed-by-tornado/#:~:text=%E2%80%94%20Pizza%20Place%20has%20been%20a,Place%20took%20a%20direct%20hit.